Monstrum
by Ranschaj
Summary: Stray children taught the ways of foul sorcery, their bodies mutated through blasphemous ritual. Sent to fight monsters, though they could not distinguish good from evil. The flicker of humanity long extinguished within them.
1. Chapter 1

**Just an idea that has been jumbling around in my head for a while. Give it a looksie. Might become a full fledged series, might just stay a oneshot.**

Desolas Arterius wiped at his plated brow. He, like all turians, couldn't sweat, so the gesture was futile in cleaning anything, though it did help relieve his stress, and there was plenty of that. Perhaps it was the yellow klaxons flashing, hurting his and everyone else's eyes as they strained to see in the inconsistent light. Or maybe it was the alarms ringing in the background, setting the ship's crew on edge with their electric warble. Or, and much more likely, it was the whole Spirits-damned debacle that had become of the invasion.

Two weeks ago, his patrol group had encountered a new species attempting to reactivate Relay 314. Since this was a violation of Citadel Law, and the Relay was firmly within Citadel space, Desolas had moved to stop them. Communication was difficult, and it resulted in shots being fired. The turian general had been, at the time, absolutely convinced it was they who had shot first, but there had been so much difficulty, trying to talk to the aliens, and trying to keep his own fleet in order, then there was the manner in which the alien ships were moving. The general had difficulty determining whether they were showing hostile intent or not, it was entirely possible that one of his commanders had made a mistake.

It mattered little in the end. The alien ships around the relay were quickly dispatched, save one that tried to flee back through it. Arterius gave the order to follow, and found what was likely a colony. He hadn't pressed the invasion, instead relaying what had transpired back to Palaven, looking for instructions from the Hierarchy. He had gotten them, and nearly thirty more vessels. His orders were to cripple or destroy any vessels in orbit, and establish a foothold in these 'human's' territory. Funnily enough, there happened to be no mention of the Council's involvement, almost as if the Hierarchy was looking to subjugate a species without anyone's interference.

None of that had mattered at the time, however, as Desolas was a soldier, and soldiers followed orders, regardless of any ethical quandaries. And so he had commenced. Wiping the defense fleet out, though not without some difficulty. These 'humans', and, as it turns out, at least three other sentient races, though they all seemed to be fundamentally the same, were quick thinking, and adaptable, and had made life difficult for the turians, destroying two cruisers and half a dozen frigates with their meager might. Still, they were outnumbered and outgunned, there was nothing they could do to stop the turians from taking the system.

The ground forces had a harder go. Reports of human infantry using weapons that fired projectiles the size of the standard mass accelerator ammo block. Kinetic barriers and traditional armor had been useless against such armament. Then there were the biotics or tech specialists or whatever they were. Capable of conjuring fire and lightning out of thin air. Desolas had seen visual reports of these abilities, and the veteran soldier of nearly a hundred battles with all known species had never, ever, seen anything like it. To make matters worse, the alien's intuition in space warfare had extended to the ground, ambushes and pincer movements made any pushes into major population centers nearly impossible, until the Hierarchs gave him permission to use orbital bombardment.

Once civilians started dying, attacks on his own troops dropped off dramatically, but attacks on the general's conscience began in earnest. Batarian pirate tactics used by a Hierarchy fleet, it was disgraceful, and he and every other turian on this cursed expedition knew it. But they were good turians, and they followed orders.

For nearly a week, afterward, they had had relative peace, though any ground patrol, air patrol, search party, and rescue team that had been sent into the forested area to the east of the smallest major city had never returned. Orbital images were somehow being distorted, despite the lack of any jamming signal emanating from the woods. What images they did manage to get at the forests edge, painted a gruesome scene. Some sort of floral tendrils sprouting from the ground and impaling his soldiers, splitting their hardsuits like they were wearing paper, splitting them open and spraying blue blood all over the wooded area.

Then there were the hills to the south, small, impish creatures the humans apparently called 'nekkers' had been waylaying ground patrols. Seemingly capable of memorizing their patterns, and attacking them when patrols were furthest apart, and eating any they managed to kill. The small creatures were also very hard to kill. Too quick to get a good shot at them, and capable of surviving multiple hits and still be effective combatants. The only good thing about them were that they needed to get close to use their claws, and once there, they were far weaker then your average turian, and easily cut up by sharp knives.

But those problems were soon secondary, as well over sixty human vessels jumped into system. Their weapons were underpowered, their barriers weak, and their ships small, but their numbers superior, and so the Hierarchy had been whittled down, though not without giving as good as they got. The debris from scores of human and turian ships littered orbital space, though only four turian vessels, all badly damaged, remained, while the humans had over two dozen still battle ready.

Then there was the boarding party.

No confirmed reports on numbers, or combat type. Just that whatever it was, was moving through the ship at a blistering pace. The screams from the engine rooms still rang through Arterius' head, though the sounds had already died from the intercom. There had been almost no gunshots that weren't from mass accelerators, but the sound of something whistling through the air, and the screams that followed, were plentiful.

"Sir," one of the soldiers standing on the bridge called for his attention, "Sensors show movement on the other side of the blast door."

Desolas steeled himself, a true turian served with distinction, even to the end. Especially to the end.

"How many signatures?"

"… one."

That didn't sound right. There had been a dozen soldiers that had been tasked with defending engineering, and now they were all dead. For one human soldier to have taken them out, not possible. It could be that he was the only survivor, but it wouldn't make any sense for the only remaining human soldier to push onwards to the most heavily fortified area of the ship, particularly when they had already crippled the vessel.

"Keep your eyes on your motion trackers!" the general shouted, "I doubt this one came alone! They could be flanking us!"

"Sir, the door!"

Desolas looked at the hologram in the center of the thick slab of steel. It was red, as the general and his bridge crew had locked it to deny the human boarders easy access. Then, right before Arterius' eyes, the hologram flickered, a haze coming over it before distorting and forming a white triangle. The image flickered again, turning green as the metal smoothly slid open, a cloud of smoke billowing through.

"Open fire!"

The alarms were drowned out by the thunderous roar of mass accelerator fire, the yellow lights overpowered by the bright muzzle flashes, and Desolas' headache magnified by many magnitude. The smoke that concealed the figure beyond pulsed and gyrated as the hypersonic rounds slashed through it, but it was not dissipating quickly. Only by the time the last round fired and the roar of gunfire was replaced by the steading beeping of overheated rifles did the smoke clear enough for the turians to see their target.

The first thing apparent about the alien, was that he was unharmed, and surrounded by an orange barrier, the second thing Arterius noticed, was the yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

So enraptured by the vertical pupils, that he did not notice the small object flying forth from the human's hand. He did notice it when it exploded, blinding him and his fellow soldiers in a great flash and deafening them in a booming crash.

The general felt his body getting pushed on by the bodies around him, he could feel the vibrations on the deck beneath his feet, and even faintly hear the cries of those by his side. But it was what his eyes, marvelous products of evolution they were, could make out after quickly adapting to the miniature sun that had so briefly existed on the deck that would haunt him to his death. And judging by what they saw, it likely would not be long.

The snake eyed human, dressed in some sort of black armor graced with metal studs, moved with a speed and grace belonging to an asari huntress. In a flash of gleaming silver, a blade, a sword really, appeared in his hands as he rushed into the first line of turians. Metallic blue blood sprayed upon the ceiling of the bridge as the first man he reached, was shown first hand how sharp that silver colored blade was, and how Hierarchy officer uniforms was insufficient protection.

The second soldier grabbed his knife, though it did him little good as the hand clutching the blade fell to the deck before a silver razor edge split the skin of his throat.

An officer near Desolas managed to raise her sidearm, but the human seemed to omniscient, as, faster than even a completely alert turian would ever be able to track, produced a huge pistol and squeezed off two shots. The officer hadn't even had a chance to really aim, just raise it to shoulder height, before two giant slugs punched through her chest, splattering the control panels not just with her blood but with the many chunks of solid matter that had been pulled through by the balls of hot lead.

Silver flashed again as a charging soldier lost his legs, the durable blade cleaving through the joints of the hard suit and dropping the unfortunate man to the ground, screaming. Just in time for the general's hearing to come back as well.

Three turians aimed their weapons at once, and the human made a gesture with his hand, a powerful force lifting all three off the ground and sending their weapons scattering across the bridge.

The tall and broad human dropped the silver blade as he himself fell to his knee as he drew two great pistols, booming shots that rent flesh, and scattered blood. As bodies dropped, the human rolled forward, bringing the blade back to bear as he once again cut down good turian, after good turian.

Finally, all that was left was the general himself, face to face with this creature that had slain so many. The last turian to fight to his death, Desolas raised his side arm, only for the silver sword to slap it out of his hand.

The tall human came close, sword tip at the turians throat when his free hand made another odd gesture. The general's vision blurred, his mind became fuzzy, but only briefly, before the warrior spoke.

"Do you understand me?"

Shock should have overcome Arterius, but considering all that he had seen over the past two weeks, miraculous translation didn't phase him in the slightest. Instead, the general steeled himself for interrogation.

"General Arterius, 303rd Recon Fleet, Serial Number…"

"So I'll take that as a yes." The human said dryly before pulling his helmet off, bringing the striking yellow eyes into clearer view, along with three diagonal scars across his face and short black fur going from the top of his head to wrap around his chin. Something else dropped out, a medallion, in the form of some snarling beast.

"Since you've introduced yourself, allow me to do the same. Shepard of Undvik… Witcher."

…

Fucking salarians. They just couldn't leave well enough alone. Every time some new and exciting tech came along, you could leave it to those amphibious bastards to find its worst possible application, and start churning it out by the megaton. Just ask Garm's people, the krogan are a dying race thanks to the spineless fucks, neutering their entire species all because they couldn't cope with the consequences of their mistakes like everyone else.

Now another one of their mistakes was plaguing Omega. Just as they couldn't leave tech alone, the ancestor's cursed piles of varren shit couldn't leave those fucking monsters humans had brought with them alone. They had poked, prodded, and accidentally seeded the beasts across the stars as the creatures they transported proved to be much more difficult to contain than anticipated. There was a batarian colony Garm had been at just a year ago where every four eyed fuck had been eviscerated, literally torn to shreds. The weird thing about it had been the location of the bodies.

When Garm's Blood Pack had arrived, hired by the scummy little aliens to protect them, they had discovered that all of the killings were taking place in the wilderness beyond the compound. There was never any sign of a struggle, either at the sight of the killing, nor at the residence of the victims. Instead, the security logs showed night after night, a batarian would stiffen up before shambling out into the wilderness, only to be seen when someone went looking for them the next morning and found them shredded to fine confetti.

So the Krogan Battlemaster had decided to simply follow the next batarian to shamble out into the wilderness, and kill whatever beast came to devour them…

Ten krogan died that night, torn to shreds and devoured by a beast the size of a tomkah, with antlers that were capable of tearing through steel, powerful limbs that could crush a krogan underfoot and propel the beast to alarming speeds, fangs that could rip the brow plate right off his warriors' heads, and that eye. Huge, red, and glowing. Garm had looked into its depths, and ran.

The battlemaster had done his research then, looking into anything that could give him an edge over these supernatural beings, and found only one solution. Got a monster problem?

"Hire a witcher."

"Excuse me?" Aria T'loak looked at him sharply from her throne. The asari bitch thought herself high and mighty. She'd be nothing but a stain on the ground and a pile of shit if she had had to face the Fiend of Buurak.

The other merc leaders looked at him with the same sense of incredulity that was present in the Queen of Omega's voice, but the normally prickly and prideful Garm didn't care what they thought of him in this situation. Whatever it was, the battlemaster had no intention of fighting it himself, or getting all his men killed.

"Witchers, human warriors that specialize in killing these monsters," the krogan stared his red eyes straight into Aria's purple ones, "Cuz that's what you got here… some sort of monster."

"Fairytales are getting to you Garm," the spineless shit in Blue Suns armor laughed, the fucking four eyes was as stupid as the rest of his pathetic species, "Probably just a roided up krogan running around. Got a little hungry and played with his food."

The man in charge of the Blue Suns, a grizzled human that Garm almost liked, if he hadn't been so annoying, quickly turned and smacked his subordinate across the face, hard. The batarian fell down the stairs, knocking his head against the wall of the landing and finally staying quiet.

"Fucking moron," Zaeed muttered before looking back up, "Garm is right, as much as I hate to turn down some credits, they don't do me any good if me and my whole crew is dead. Hire a witcher, and this problem will be over before you can tell him your number one rule. I can even recommend a good one."

"Ridiculous," salarians never learned from their own hubris, and Dok was no exception, the quadless Eclipse commander was openly sneering at his betters, "This is some out of control junkie that needs to be put down. But since neither of you seem keen on collecting easy credits, I'll not try and dissuade you from competing for them."

Aria laughed that beautiful, deadly laugh, "Amazing, the salarian is the only one with any spine. Go ahead Dok, payment once I get a head…"

…

The next morning, both Garm and Zaeed were back with Aria, though this time it wasn't in that loud and claustrophobic club Afterlife. No, this time they were in the bowels of Omega, looking at what the mercs could only presume were the remains of Eclipse mercs.

"Pieces of skin, pulverized bone, chewed up organs, none of them even remotely close to a shape resembling a body."

Aria, it seemed, was not impressed, "Excellent detective work, Massani, any other deductions?"

The human wasn't phased as he continued, "No blood, except for smudges where whatever was licking it up couldn't quite lap it up. In my unprofessional opinion, we should probably get out of this thing's hunting grounds before it starts getting hungry again."

"I don't suppose either of you would be willing try this job," the Queen of Omega asked, frustration clear in her voice.

"Credits are no good dead," Garm answered for the both of them, "And this," he gestured to the scattered pieces of salarian, asari, turian, and human, "is not a good death."

Aria T'loak looked pissed, and out of her element. This was new for her, it was new for the entire galaxy, barring the humans, and all their splinter species of elves, dwarves, and halflings, though Garm couldn't tell the difference between any of them.

"Massani!" she barked, the human looking back to her, a grim look on his face, "You said you could recommend one of these… witchers?"

A nod.

"What's the bastard's name?"

"Shepard…"

…

"How much?"

"Gotta determine what it is first. Sounds like a lower vampire, just don't know what kind," the witcher said evenly, uncaring of the storm brewing behind the Queen's eyes. The fucker had a quad, that was clear.

"Give me a price range…"

"Fleder or Ekimmara would ballpark for around twenty thousand, Katakan or a Garkain and we're looking for thirty. Gods forbid it's a Nekurat or a higher vampire, then we're looking at a hundred fifty, no less."

"Interesting," Aria said, credits didn't bother her, though she didn't like cheats. The asari matriarch would pay top dollar for top services, but would give anyone who tried to rip her off a slow death, "Why the price jump?"

"Because then I'm not hunting some beast," Shepard replied, inspecting a turian liver with what appeared to be surgical tools and an omniscope. Weren't witchers supposed to be warriors, not cops?

"Nekurat is an ancient Katakan, and a creature that at some point gains the power of higher thinking. Can apply reason, same as you and me, and makes the hunt that much more dangerous."

"What's the sword for?"

Viper eyes found Garm's own. The unnatural yellow slits didn't belong on that face and set the battle hardened krogan on edge, "Killing monsters."

The razor sharp eyes focused back on the blue liver before sticking a pair of forceps in a particularly ragged hole, pulling a curved tooth from the pale flesh, turning it over under the omniscope, "Garkain."

"Thirty thousand?" Aria asked, seemingly bored in the transaction and the actions of the witcher himself.

"Rings on the tooth put it at over a hundred and fifty years old," Shepard replied, Garm noticing just how raspy the human's voice was, "Thirty five."

"Fine, I want it dead tonight."

"Station's big, thirty seven."

Aria quirked one of her stenciled in brows before giving a counter offer, "Thirty five, and a safehouse two levels above the docking ring is yours."

Those unnatural eyes pinned the Queen of Omega to her spot as they mulled over her offer, though to the asari bitch's credit, she didn't show any outward fear, "Deal."

The witcher wasted no time as he pulled a stainless steel case up onto the table and opened it, revealing what appeared to be a chemistry set, complete with a burner. As this Shepard began pulling vials marked in a language Garm's translator couldn't understand, he had one final question, "How long until midnight here?"

"Six standard hours."

Shepard's finger's twisted and the burner ignited in a puff, despite the fact he never touched the damned thing, "Where do I bring the head when I'm done?"

"Seem sure of yourself, this thing has killed nearly a hundred people already, most well armed mercs."

"Not my first lesser vampire," the witcher said easily as he dropped three different vials into a container of clear liquid, shaking it quickly before placing it on the burner.

"Bring it to Afterlife, it's on the docking ring, you can't miss it. Show them the head, they'll bring you to me."

Shepard pulled a stack of silver slugs from the top half of the case before sliding it into the handle of a pistol so large, Garm almost thought it was a krogan weapon. He repeated the process for a second pistol, before sliding both weapons into holsters underneath his shoulders, "Got it."

The witcher then unsheathed his sword, the full length, about a meter long, shimmered in the station's artificial light. It was true what he had read, witcher blades knew no equal in all the galaxy.

"How much for the sword?" Clearly Aria was as impressed as he was.

"Not for sale."

He plucked the vial from the burner, now having turned a bloody red, and popped the top from it and poured the contents onto a rag. There was some purpose to what he was doing, but Garm was fucked if he knew, maybe it was poison, or maybe it was some sort of protection against the monster's blood, and he was spreading on the blade to keep it from being damaged.

It was at this point that the krogan noticed the hilt of the sword, and saw a pair of snarling beasts intertwined at the end that matched the silver medallion around his neck. It matched the symbol for the School of the Wolf.

Shepard grabbed two more vials, these premade. One was green, the other red, and placed them onto some sort of apparatus that extended from his right forearm. The machine plunged the liquid within the containers and presumably into the witcher's blood, causing an immediate reaction that chilled Garm to the point his quad was trying to get back inside.

Blood vessels strained against the man's skin, turning from red, to blue, to an unhealthy black as his eyes darkened and his entire body convulsed as the black marks ran across his skin. Finally it ended, one drop of blood falling to the floor from the human's nose. One sniff, and Garm wanted to vomit, and it took a lot for a krogan to want to vomit.

"Be seeing you soon."

…

Perceptible, even over the thumping music, were gasps of shock and cries of horror. There weren't any cries of pain, so Aria assumed that the witcher must be done, and it was only four hours later.

"Aria," the batarian guard to her left ground out in that annoyingly deep throated voice of his species, "Some human with snake eyes is here. Says he's got business, and a head to prove it."

"Bring him up Shok," she commanded, feigning uninterest. It wouldn't do for the thousand year old matriarch with no heart and a nasty temper to seem to care about some lowly human she hired. It wasn't true, she certainly _was_ interested in it. The job, the creature, the man, all of it, for all her centuries of experience, what was happening both here, and in the galaxy abroad was something she had never seen before.

Magic, fantastic beasts, and not just one brand new species, but several, thinking, feeling, fully sentient species all from the same planet. And then there were these witchers, if any of them were at all like this Shepard, Aria would have to see what she could do to get one on her payroll, and if he proved interesting enough, see if she couldn't get this one into her bed, for he was certainly handsome enough.

The tall and broad human appeared before her 'throne', he was dirty, black liquid the Queen could only assume was the creature's blood streaked across his face, the typical dirt and grime of Omega's streets coated his armor joints, dulling the silver studs sticking out of the black ceramics and giving the man a grim look that suited his furry chin and viper eyes just fine.

He raised a hand, a hook hanging from it, and a head impaled upon it. The witcher dropped it at her feet, giving Aria her first in person look at what a human would call a Post Conjuction Creature.

"Not winning any beauty contests, is it?"

The creature was ugly. Two fleshy sacks on either side of its head, their purpose unknown to Omega's Queen, an elongated snout that ended in a stubbed nose, and grotesque, bulging red eyes. Mottled black skin covered its head, wet with its own blood, and perhaps some sort of awful excretion the creature emitted. But it was clearly a dangerous predator, and nothing made that more clear than giant incisors and long sharp fangs protruding from the upper and lower jaw.

"Better that than a fleder," Shepard grunted as he moved a hand to his side, not to rest his hand, but to hold some sort of injury, "At least these ones don't stink as bad."

"Nirkus," Aria gestured to her turian guard, "Get this thing out of here."

The dutiful pirate turned bodyguard grabbed the ugly cranium and began to walk away only for the matriarch to stop him, "Actually… get it stuffed."

"Want a trophy?"

"A reminder for the people of Omega," Aria corrected the witcher, "That I'll take care of them."

Shepard huffed in amusement, "Right, next time you can fight the garkain."

"I did. I threw money at the problem, and lo and behold, a solution came in to grab it up."

She keyed her omnitool, beginning the credits transfer to the witcher, "Sit down, witcher. I have some questions."

The man looked around her little throne room before Aria nodded to the seat to her right, where people in her favor typically found themselves. His hand never left the wound at his side, but he did look at it and then back up to her as he sat down. The asari nodded and Shepard immediately set about taking his armor off.

As he was undoing the hidden latches, the matriarch posed her first question, "I was looking for information on witchers while you were hunting. Other than the basic details of what you do and where you come from, there isn't much."

"Anyone who really wants to know typically are talking to Priests of the Eternal Fire," the armor plating covering his chest came loose, revealing a skin suit underneath that he began peeling back, revealing more of that bronze tinged skin, and the angry red and pink marks that crisscrossed the flesh.

"Oh I read their version," Aria laughed, "'Monstrum', they think you are no better than an animal, and are as bad if not worse than the creatures you hunt."

The suit was completely off by now, revealing musculature that was vaguely familiar to an asari, as it was similar in placement to their own, but Aria had to admit, she very much liked the way his rippled against his skin as he moved. The scars were much more alien to her, mostly in their numbers and density. Krogan carried plenty of scars, but theirs typically didn't last long, and it was the rare injury that caused a scar to hang around forever on one of them. The pink and red marks on Shepard however, would stick around much longer, and every time he suffered a wound sufficiently deep enough, he'd add to the collection.

"Didn't take long for most of Citadel space to agree with them," the witcher commented as he pulled some sort of hook and some thread, tying the string to the eyehole on the handle of the hook, "I had a contract on a turian colony. The turian that took it out opened up negotiations by calling me a mutant, and his seven year old daughter followed it up by calling me a monstrous freak."

"What was plaguing them?"

Shepard pushed the hook through the skin on one end of the ragged wound, and pulled it out on the other end, working his way along the claw mark, "Turns out one of their younglings didn't want to commit himself to mandatory military service, and took his own life. Instead of mourning the child, the turian who took out the contract, the boy's father, chose instead to disown him. That sort of insult isn't easily ignored by the dead, and the wraith had taken to torturing it's still living father."

"Should have let the kid have his revenge."

"It's my job to kill monsters."

 _What a perfect setup for me,_ "I could use a man like you, Shepard. Someone who takes money, and does what he's told with no questions."

"I'm not a criminal. I don't sell drugs, I don't steal, I don't smuggle, and I'm not an assassin."

Aria crossed her legs as she watched the dark haired man pull the string tight and tie it off, closing the wound, "What about Torfan?"

Viper eyes fixed on her own purple ones. She could see how people could find a witcher's gaze unsettling. Her? She found that it made her pants moist.

The Queen of Omega allowed a smile to spread over her face, "Rumor has it that the Alliance hired a witcher to soften up one of the harder bases, from the School of the Wolf."

There was no change in lighting, nothing to cause a reaction in a natural person's eyes, yet both slits nestled in two stones of pure amber narrowed all the same. Aria briefly wondered if he had conscious control over their dilation.

"That was you, wasn't it?"

No change on his face. The man could stare down a thresher maw, and could seem so cold. The matriarch knew better, however. She could feel the fire in the witcher's heart.

"I know more than a few people personally who would love to get their hands on you. What you did in those tunnels apparently made quite the impression on them."

Aria genuinely couldn't tell if he was tensing up to strike at her, or if he was simply gauging her and trying to determine her motives, it didn't matter much, as she defused any tension that may, or may not have existed. Seriously, he might have fallen asleep with his eyes open with the emotion he displayed.

"I don't plan on introducing you to any of them, if that's what your worried about. But I am curious, are you only a common merc for the Alliance?"

"I said I wasn't an assassin," he ground out, the tone accentuating just how raspy and quiet his voice was. If Aria's little throne room hadn't had sound suppression systems in it, it was unlikely she'd ever be able to hear the witcher, "I also said that I kill monsters."

Purple eyes widened at the implication as her heart skipped a beat. Like some sort of Justicar, this witcher seemed to take justice into his own hands when no one else would. He couldn't be any sexier.

Shepard's omnitool blinked, the witcher taking a quick look at the orange screen before looking back up at her, "Transfer's complete, you said you had a safehouse that was mine if I got it done before midnight?"

A slow smile spread across the ageless asari's beautiful face, "Let me show you."

Oh he had proven more than interesting enough, and she wasn't done trying to persuade him yet…

…

Shepard strode through the crowds of the Citadel with ease. Humans, and elves and dwarves etcetera, etcetera, were still fairly new on the galactic scene, but even the aliens had gotten the memo fairly quickly. If you see a witcher, unless you have business with him, stay clear.

Their reasoning was all difference. Some simply recognized that he was likely in pursuit of a monster or at the very least on a case, and lives likely depended on him. More likely, though, was that they thought he was diseased, and that he would spread it if they got too close. Others still looked at him as though he were a monster himself, likely to lash out and devour one of them. There were even some who looked at him in outright disgust.

"Fucking freak."

Amazing. An asari that had likely been alive for centuries, likely seeing her first witcher in the flesh, having only even known of his existence for thirty years, had just called him a freak. The galaxy really was just a wonderful place.

"Are you Sergeant Vakarian?"

A blue face painted turian in the standard C-Sec hardsuit looked up from his terminal and jumped in his set when his own bright blue eyes found Shepard's own viper eyes. A common reaction, there were only two people who had ever said they liked his eyes. One was Omega's Queen Aria T'loak after a night of rough fucking, and the other was his older sister, a wrinkly old woman well into her eighties and already had a granddaughter in the N7 program. He'd never met the young girl, but his sister Cerys had told him so much, he felt as though he had raised her himself.

"Uh… yes…" the young turian seemed a little nervous, maybe he thought like most of his species, and simply mistrusted humans in general. Or even better would be simple outright hatred for all things magic and unnatural, a la the witcher.

"C-Sec commander sent me to you, said you have all the details on your pest problem."

The avian alien blinked a couple of times before standing, "Right, we need to go down a few levels, to sanitation, that's where we think the problem is."

"Why do you think that?" Shepard asked, going immediately into the details.

The tall alien grabbed a gun from his desk and slapped it to his thigh, starting into the crowds with the nearly as tall witcher in tow.

"Last few weeks we've had machinery down there malfunctioning, getting jammed up, even physically broken sometimes. Just three days ago a filter had been ripped off."

Drowners? "What makes this witcher work? Could just be some big rock rattling around your plumbing."

"None of the keepers going down there ever came back, and two days ago a heavily armed C-Sec taskforce went in with the mechanics to look for the keepers while the mechanics worked on the filter. No one came back from that either. Me and another team were sent in, just to look for them and get them back."

"Did you find them?" maybe a water hag, possibly cohabitating with drowners, but how would it get on the Citadel?

"Only the parts it didn't like."

Fussy eater then… Relict? Possible, but a solid ID couldn't be made without examining the scene.

Shepard was fairly absorbed in his thoughts, but even a distracted witcher noticed more than the average man. That, and the salarian following them wasn't being terribly discreet.

"Who's our friend?"

Vakarian seemed startled at the accusatory tone the Wolf had taken with him, but more than that, seemed to be confused by the question, "Who?"

"The salarian missing half a horn who's been following us since we left C-Sec."

Terribly unsubtle, the blue face painted turian turned and practically shouted to the salarian to hide, "I don't see anyone like that."

"Not important," Shepard sighed, "How far are we?"

The Sergeant pointed to a lift, "This will take us straight to the sanitation levels."

The ride was slow, but smooth, giving the witcher time to prepare himself mentally. There was no point in readying any potions yet or brewing a blade oil. He didn't know what sort of creature it was, whether or not he would need to rely on his sword, his signs, his twin pistols, or if he needed to go and grab his rifle. What was left of the bodies will tell him what he needed to know, and as always, he had brought his Witcher's Cache with him, though more than a few chemicals were a little light, and he was down to two magazines of silver slugs for his pistols. He'd have to go look for arboretum. Likely there'd be more than a few plants he could make use of. There might even be an arms dealer or a silver smith willing to make some more slugs for him.

"Uh… what's your name?"

Small talk? Fair enough, "Shepard of Undvik."

The turian clearly had some thoughts on that, "That's it? No family name?"

"That is my family name, didn't remember my personal name when I left the School of the Wolf, but I remembered the name Shepard, and I remembered that I had been born on Undvik."

The turian looked down at the floor of the lift, "Oh."

Silence reigned again, but Shepard's head was still spinning with thoughts of his upcoming confrontation. His companions head, seemed to be spinning with different thoughts, but fortunately for the both of them, their ride came to an end.

"It's not far now, about sixty meters ahead and the door is on the right."

When they reached the scene, it was not at all what Shepard had imagined. He had been thinking some cramped hallway and maybe a couple of man sized pipes that could fit a drowner or a water hag. What he got, was a cavernous area, with a huge tank filled with the refuse of nearly a dozen different species. Only a light mass effect field kept the smell at bay.

A large ringed platform surrounded the pool of excrement, and it was littered with severed body parts, and stains of dried blood.

"I don't get it," Vakarian said as he stood next to the witcher, "There were humans, asari, salarians, and turians in that group. It ate something from each of them, so shouldn't it be dead, or at least terribly sick?"

"Not if it's a relict, necrophage, or vampire," the human rasped as he stalked over to the first pile of body parts.

"What are those?"

"Dangerous, you should get out of here," Shepard said as he pulled a turian spleen from the pile. The Sergeant didn't take the advice, but did stay quiet and allowed the witcher to work.

Setting his Witcher's Cache on the ground and pulling a scalpel from one of the external compartments, the supernatural detective cut the organ open and took a sniff, "Blood, rot," a deep breath, "iron?"

Shepard dug a little deeper into the turian blood factory and pulled an implant out.

"Lieutenant Anyra had a weak immune system, so she had a bunch of implants put in to regulate it."

Did it not like metal? Or was it sensitive to electrical current? He'd need a few more clues to come to a conclusion.

A salarian heart, a regulatory implant on the second ventricle. A human arm, small electrodes implanted in the muscle to help regenerate after significant atrophy or injury. Another turian body part, this one a whole hand, one that quickly proved to be entirely synthetic in nature apart from small chunks of blue tinged flesh hanging on to the connections.

The final, and most damning piece of evidence, was an entire asari head. Untouched apart from some slime that could have come from rot or could have come from the creature. It was difficult to tell, mostly thanks to the humid environment it was in. But the most unique piece of the head was the lack of any implants. What it was that could cause the creature to pass up on this?

Asari were biotics, powerful ones, with clumps of element zero in nerve centers giving them control over dark energy and granting them a powerful form of telekinesis. What was most significant, to the witcher, was that when eezo was exposed to an electric current, it created an electromagnetic field.

Using his omnitool to shock the skull, a bright pulse of blue appeared, causing the hair on the witcher's head stand on edge.

"Kayran."

Explains the slime. It wasn't sweating rot, but mucus, and if Shepard recalled the entry from his Wolf's Bestiary, the kayran wasn't a big fan of fields of energy. That's why the Yrden sign was so effective. Another fascinating point, was that young kayran were often mistaken for an octopus, and as a result, when they inevitably outgrew their tanks and artificial homes, the moron who owned them, would make the mistake of flushing it down into the sewers where it would survive off of garbage and waste, growing bigger and bigger before it could grow big enough to hunt.

The mucus was also poisonous, and an antidote would need to be brewed along side a relict oil. Flipping the Cache open, a problem presented itself in the form of a vicious supply shortage. He'd be able to make the antidote, but the blade oil needed a snifter of White Gull, something he was severely lacking in.

He set about combining the ingredients for the antidote and setting them on the burner as he pulled out his two twin pistols from their shoulder holsters, ejecting the iron ammo block and sliding in the special stack of .50 caliber silver slugs into the handle. He only had eight shots for each pistol, but it was unlikely they'd be of any use against a kayran. The creatures grew big quickly once they began feasting on living creatures.

"What's a Kayran?"

"A relict, cephalopod, very big, very smart, and extremely deadly. I'm going to draw it back here, how deep is the pool?"

"Only a few feet, this entire facility is shut down until we can get rid of the monster."

The witcher grunted in affirmation as he continued to prepare himself for the bout. Grabbing a vial of Swallow and placing it on his auto injector. The immediate effects of the regenerative potion were always nauseating, but he could handle one without showing much external discomfort. Finally ready, he turned back to the C-Sec officer.

"Where do the pipes lead?"

"Biggest leads to the Presidium, dirty water from the lake flows through here, the rest just lead deeper into the Ward."

Shepard nodded, and pushed the Witcher's Cache into Vakarian's hands, "Hold onto this for me. I'm going down there and I'm going to draw the Kayran in, as soon as I draw my sword… run."

The turian looked at him blankly for a second before nodding quickly and retreating to the doorway as the human turned back to the sewer pit, "What a day to forget my helmet…"

…

The smell had threatened to make him pass out, that was the problem with having a sense of smell four times as sensitive as a varren's. The sight of a dozen different species fecal material did nothing to help with the sickening smell. His only saving grace was the vacuum sealed suit he wore from the neck down. As long as he didn't pop a seal or get knocked down into the fetid water, he wouldn't get any of it on his skin.

However, as blood slowly dissipated into the water, having been sourced from one of the body parts on the ledge, Shepard got the feeling that he was doomed to several long, scalding hot showers as men in environsuits scrubbed him down with hard bristled brushes. The water was already sloshing, and his medallion was literally bouncing off his armor, and the kayran hadn't even entered the pit yet. It was either gigantic, or terribly excitable.

With a giant splash, the cephalopod exploded out the end of one of the bigger pipes leading into the wards, one that you could likely fit the witcher's own personal transport in with room to spare, and the beast had to squeeze its way out. Six tentacles splayed out, spraying rancid water as the kayran allowed itself to stretch to full size. Mottled skin covered in mucus shined in the harsh artificial light, revealing just how enormous this thing had become.

"They're gonna owe me a fortune."

Silver flashed as Grey Wolf was ripped from its scabbard across his back. The snarling wolf's head pommel seemed to grin in excitement, even as the snarling wolf's head medallion jumped for joy against his chest.

Beady eyes focused on him as the witcher assumed a fighter's stance, then raised up, revealing rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth surrounding the only vulnerable point on the kayran's body, and let loose a roar that shook the walls and sloshed the fetid water.

"Come on you piece of filth!"

Both combatants exploded into action, tentacles reaching for a target that sent a silver/dimeritium sword twirling. Each time one of the long slimy appendages would close in, Shepard would send it back missing a chunk, the razor edge of the blade easily cleaving through the soft flesh. Unfortunately, the relict could regenerate at speeds to make krogan green with envy, and even completely regrow chunks of missing flesh in mere moments.

The disgusting sewage spreayed as the beast slammed its massive and overpowered tentacles into the pool, attempting to knock its target off balance, but a witcher not so easily flustered, and Shepard was able to keep his balance as he retreated from the advancing beast. His feet were slowed by the water, making movement more difficult than he really needed it to be. A Kayran was a deadly enough foe on dry land, in water it was all but invincible. He was going to have to get creative.

A creative spark was difficult to find, however, as one of the six constantly self-repairing tentacles snaked through the water and latched onto his leg, pulling him off of his feet and introducing the witcher to his worst nightmare. A mouthful of alien sewage.

As the appendage lifted him into the air, Grey Wolf cut it off, sending the witcher back to the fetid water, only to be caught by another tentacle, this one grabbing him by the sword arm. Two .50's to the teeth caused the creature the first real pain of the battle, but it did not drop Shepard, instead shooting for the largest pipe in the pit, one that afforded it plenty of room.

The gargantuan valve that had sealed it was still shut tight, but as viper eyes watched the grey and green mottled cephalopod charge for the barrier, Shepard knew the wall of steel didn't stand a chance.

The butterfly valve twisted violently as the Kayran pushed against it violently, and millions of gallons of water began to rush through.

…

Naryna smiled at her little tour group. Mostly humans, but there were plenty of other species represented as well, all new comers to the greatest city in all of the galaxy. The asari had been giving tours like this for nearly a century, and it had yet to grow old. Not to say that it was still exciting, or that there was ever anything new happening in her job, but she did enjoy meeting new people everyday, getting to know the values and cultures that had spread across the galaxy.

"And if you look out here, you can actually see the pipe that slowly drains the lake on the Presidium. It is thirty five meters in diameter, and is capable of flushing the entire lake in a day should there ever be the need. As you can see, this part of the pipe is clear so as to help anyone working on the sanitation systems to see if there is ever any debris to large to go through the filters at the other end…" a human child had raised her hand, "Yes sweetie?"

"What's that?"

Naryna followed the little girl's finger and her jaw dropped and face slackened at what she saw. Some sort of sea creature was racing up the pipe, fighting the current of the water and winning easily. Even more frightening, was the man it held in its clutches!

The man seemed to fumble about before swinging some sort of grey stick that completely severed one of the creature's tentacles halfway up. Black liquid poured from the wound, but the monster seemed unperturbed as it simply grabbed the man again and continued racing up the pipe towards the Presidium.

"Uh," the asari matron said, unsure of how to explain this, or move the tour on, "Who wants to go the Zakera Skyways?"

…

Shepards lungs burned as he gulped down air, finally they had broken the surface. Something for which he would be eternally grateful to the Kayran for not understanding that its foe could not breath underwater. That and the fact that it had taken them to cleaner, if much, much deeper waters.

The cephalopod attempted to slam him into a bridge crossing the lake, but only managed to fling him upon dry ground where he was able to regain his footing. It was making mistakes he could capitalize on, but the damn thing wasn't getting any more unkillable. Shepard had to think of something quick.

A quick pat of his belt revealed a possible opening, but the Kayran would have to give him the opportunity.

On cue, massive tentacles gripped the entirety of the bridge, causing screams and panic in the thousands of civilians and diplomats walking alongside the idyllic lake. The fighter sized monster hauled itself up, beady eyes focusing in on him before using its other four tentacles to block any escape. The beast reared up, revealing its mouth, and exactly the opportunity the witcher had been waiting for.

The Samum detonated inside the Kayran, not doing any real damage, but the concussive force was enough to loosen the creature's grip on the bridge as it fell back into the water, stunned.

Shepard wasted no time gripping Grey Wolf in a reverse grip and leaping down atop the cephalopod's soft but thick head. As the creature was beginning to shake out of its stupor, the monster slayer dug the point of the silver/dimeritium sword in between the eyes and drug it forward, opening the soft skull and revealing the throbbing grey matter underneath.

Already the Kayran was stitching the open wound back together, but it was something that worked to the witcher's favor as one Dancing Star, and one Grapeshot dropped on top of the flesh, fuses lit, just as the wound completely sealed itself.

A tentacle wrapped around his midsection, holding him away from the Kayran's body as those eyes once again focused on him. The thing was pissed, though, fortunately, that would only be the case for the next few seconds.

Flesh rent open in the initial explosion, tossing black blood and blotchy skin up into the air, the second explosion sucked all the air out of Shepard's lungs as a massive fireball expanded and contracted, though he was fortunate in comparison to the Kayran, whose guts were pulled out through its brains, then lit on fire and scorched.

The witcher dropped into the clean waters of the Presidium lake as the relict, now a lifeless husk of charred and burning flesh, sunk below the surface, extinguishing the flames and sparing everyone on the Presidium the fate of having to breathe in charred Kayran.

One sniff and Shepard realized that that was only a small mercy, for anyone near him would still have to smell the stench of galactic sewage.

"I'm going to end up spending most of this reward on soap and hot showers…"

 **What do you guys think? Yay? Nay? What are you doing you absolute fool, no one likes your stories stop writing? Let me know, this one is kind of near and dear to my heart.**

 **I didn't go into much detail about certain things, like the makeup of the sword Grey Wolf, or how his twin pistols worked. Nor did I get into how witchers fit in with the Alliance military, because they do, believe me. Mostly because I don't know if this is just going to be a single chapter that I put out there and it immediately gets rejected or what. I ultimately just wanted to build this conjoined universe with this chapter. If you guys think I should continue, then I'll certainly get into more detail.**

 **This is literally just me satisfying my need to create a fanfic series that is severely lacking on this site. I think this has a ton of potential, but I don't know if anyone share's my belief**

 **So drop a review, it is very important regarding the life of this story. Thank you!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Alright, let's give this one a shot. This is more of an expansion chapter, showing significantly more detail about the universe. Not much, but some. You know how I am, an absolute asshat.**

 **And just a quick snipe, I fully endorse anyone writing a Witcher story. Witcher 3 is quite possibly the greatest fantasy adventure game, not necessarily in the RPG aspect but whatevs, ever created. I certainly consider it so. And if you have the time and the inclination, you absolutely should read the Andrez Sapkowski books that created the Witcher-verse, they are fantastic.**

Shepard grabbed a hold of the ledge, hauling his waterlogged self onto one of the lower sitting areas on the shores of the Presidium lake. There were a few civilians nearby, all staring wildly at him. Not that the witcher could find it in himself to blame them. They _had_ just witnessed him slay a Kayran by cutting its head open, sealing two grenades in its head and blowing it to hell. They had also watched both Shepard and the monster, appear from beneath the lake's surface with a great splash and no indication of where they might have come from.

The viper eyed man paid them no heed regardless, as he instead finally pulled all of himself from the waters and laid out on the metal deck of the Presidium. Deep and heavy breaths panted their way through the monster hunter's mouth as he spread his arms and legs and gazed up at the fabricated sky of the Presidium.

Shepard preferred no sky to fake ones, as his enhanced vision, akin to that of an eagle looking through binoculars, was able to easily pick out all of the flaws. The clouds were atrociously thin, and the blue sky was clearly a holographic screen while the sun was a little too yellow to be real.

Even worse were the sounds. The witcher could, if it was quiet enough, literally hear the lice on another person's head if they stood close enough to touch with the tip of Grey Wolf. Sure there was the sound of people, but the sounds of nature were absent, and it left the mutated man, someone who spent the vast majority of his life in nature, either stalking or baiting some monster, with a sense of emptiness. He had actually purchased one of those ridiculous 'Sounds of Nature' tracks to help him sleep when he was on a space station or on his own personal ship. Otherwise he preferred wide open skies, even if they weren't blue, had clouds, or their sun was the wrong color.

The Wolf wiggled on the ground, feeling water squelch and flow through his undersuit. He was going to have to drain that out, and chances were good that it wasn't the relatively clean waters of the lake next to him, but the smelly, rancid, putrid waters of the sewer. If the witcher had to guess, he'd say there were at least seven different colors of urine touching his skin at that exact moment.

Shepard finally gathered himself and sat up, taking in the sight of a gathered crowd of observers, all watching him with great interest. Well, they'd certainly get a show.

The butcher's hooks he kept at his waist, also came with about fifty meters of tightly wound carbon filament cable capable of suspending an entire fiend all by itself. Stripping his armor off, even peeling the undersuit down to his waist, the witcher anchored the tiny winch attached to the waist of his armor to a bench that must have been previously occupied, grabbed both butcher hooks, and dove into the lake. After all, proof of a kill was everything to a witcher, and every autopsy he could perform would only help him and his fellow witchers on future contracts.

In the blue waters of the lake, Shepard realized that the water was not terribly clean, and at the lake bottom there was more than several years' worth of trash and sediment that had been built up, and in the water itself was riddled with debris floating at various depths. Honestly, the witcher didn't know what was more toxic, the Kayran's blood, or the ever more popular drink, Rock Troll.

Speaking of the monster, the giant cephalopod corpse was slowly oozing black blood as its oily mucus slipped off and rose to the surface. The massive wounds weren't regenerating, so Shepard felt fairly secure in his assessment of the beast. That it was dead.

This was further reinforced by the fact it didn't react in the slightest as he plunged the first hook into the soft, squishy flesh at the head, nor did it move when the witcher inserted the second one deep inside the mouth filled with razor sharp teeth.

Making sure the hooks were secure, the Wolf felt his lungs begin to beg for air, rose to the surface. Upon breaking the surface, Shepard could see that his little crowd had only grown while he was beneath the surface. Camera drones were floating about too, and the witcher could hear sirens and see the flashing lights already. Hopefully one of them had the turian sergeant Vakarian in it, so he could get some of his tools. A sword was a hard weapon to perform surgery with.

A flick of his omnitool, and the tiny winch on his belt began pulling at the huge corpse at the bottom of the lake. The motor wasn't terribly powerful, it was mostly intended to assist him with pulling himself up, or any tool or small trophy he normally couldn't climb with. Fortunately, it didn't have to pull all by itself, as Shepard put his pair of gauntlets back on and grabbed the carbon filament line.

As soon as he started pulling, pain exploded along his ribs. Damn relict must have squeezed him pretty hard. The adrenaline and then the cool waters had reduced the pain at first, and the Swallow still in his blood probably healed what had likely been a lethal wound before he had experienced the mortal consequences. Witcher potions had come a long way since they were first brewed more than a millennia ago. The ingredients required were ultimately the same, but it was the brewing techniques, helped by advances in chemistry, and the concentration of the ingredients that helped potion's like Swallow and Thunderbolt last for hours instead of minutes.

It also helped that the mutations were much better than they were those thousand plus years ago, back when only three in ten children survived the Trial of the Grasses. Now a days, ninety nine in a hundred boys survived, though the batches never get that large. Shepard's own group had only been him and three others, all of them had survived the mutagens, though the pain from the process wasn't something he'd ever wish upon any others, and he still wanted to vomit at the sight of a Sad Albert.

It was the Trial of the Medallion that had culled his group. Drowners nabbing one of the seventeen year olds, and a foglet tricked another one into running into a trap. Surprisingly, the rock trolls were the least dangerous. The ogroids had been weary of the young adults at first, but Shepard's classmate, Artur, had reminded him that rock trolls were capable of reason. Killing them wasn't always necessary, and often wasn't a smart choice.

Turns out that had been one of the tests involved in the Trial. With nothing but a short silver dagger, their signs, and rags for armor, they weren't likely to be able to kill trolls, so they'd have to find a different way, just as they would while on the Path. Shepard would never claim that he fought to protect monsters from humans just as much as to protect humans from monsters, but there were more than a few instances in his Path that he had been found a way to let monsters and humans, even aliens one time, live in peace.

The pain in his ribs quickly faded away as the Swallow finished its work at fixing his ribs. Good thing too, as no one from the gathered throng seemed willing to help him with the other line.

Or they weren't, until Sergeant Vakarian appeared from the crowd, grabbing the other line and pulling with him, the motor making their job easier and holding the corpse when they moved their hands.

"Got my case?"

The turian didn't even pause, "It's on the bench."

Shepard just grunted in acknowledgement, focusing on the line as the surface began to ripple. The corpse emerged to the gasps of the assembled, some even began to applause, though there were others who were murmuring in shock and horror. Whether they thought he was a hero or a killer who had just murdered an 'innocent' creature.

Regardless of misinformed naturalists who believed the Kayran needed any sort of protection, the witcher pulled the corpse right up to the side of the landing, locked the winch in place so it could hold the beast there, and turned to the turian, "Thanks for that. You think you and your boys can keep the area clear while I perform an autopsy on this thing?"

The C-Sec operative blinked twice, "Uh, I don't know, I'd have to ask…"

"Alright everyone, back up! Give the man some space!" a dark plated turian started barking to the crowd, "Officers, lets get a line up, twenty meters from the shore!"

Vakarian looked as sheepish as turians managed to get as he turned back to the witcher, "Yes, we can."

Shepard simply cocked an eyebrow before going over to his Witcher's Cache, popping it open and grabbing a tiny vial of White Honey. The auto injector of his right gauntlet wouldn't work without the powerpack on the chest armor, fortunately, witcher potions were still able to be ingested orally.

After breaking the glass vial and downing the tincture, the Wolf grabbed the silver scalpel and sample tubes before turning back to the corpse. The body was being held up by the cables, and the Kayran had just enough buoyancy for the witcher to leap atop the deceased cephalopod, not particularly relishing the feel of the slimy flesh beneath his bare feet.

First things first, collect a sample of poisonous mucus, just in case there was any variation between this particular strain to the typical venom of a typical Kayran. Not to mention its many uses in various potions and decoctions.

Someone was close, closer than the line of C-Sec officers would allow. Viper eyes looked up from their work to find that salarian that had been following him earlier approaching the corpse and the witcher perched atop it.

Shepard chose to ignore him for the time being, simply allowing the older amphibian to stare as he dug through what was left of the brain, looking for the pineal gland as that was where he could find a concentrated solution of the Kayran's mutagen. The mutagen would be essential in determining if the species was undergoing any sort of evolution or if this particular one may have been mutated. To the Wolf's knowledge, while Kayran's typically grew quite quickly, they still took months to grow as large as this one, and someone definitely should've noticed it beforehand.

"Excuse me!" was he really trying this?

The salarian stepped closer, Shepard still not paying even the slightest bit of attention to him as he pulled a few lobes of brain out and finally revealing the pineal gland.

"Searching for specific parts…" the guy was talking, to the witcher or to himself Wolf had no idea, but viper eyes remained focused on their task as the silver scalpel carefully cut around the delicate organ.

"Food? No, still human in sense of taste. For unique blood chemistry? Possible, creature capable of devouring levo and dextro," the frog man took a deep breath, probably because he was speaking as quickly as possible, "Could be useful. Studying creature? Unlikely, warrior, not scholar, and no credits in study."

Shepard rolled his eyes as he cut the pineal gland over the sample tube, green liquid slowly oozing out and filling the glass container. Another sample down, even as the salarian continued to babble to himself, now moving on to various equipment he was using, even going so far as to walking closer to his carefully laid out pistols and sword.

"Sword, silver- No, no, Yes! Silver alloy, possibly depleted uranium? No, titanium? No, edge would never hold, tungsten? No, same problem as depleted uranium, too heavy…"

The witcher had stopped listening at this point as he noticed something odd on the pineal gland he was holding. There was a growth on it… actually, there were growths all over the brain. Looking closer, the monster slayer realized they were tumors. All of them were small and wouldn't have impacted the creature much, but they were still there, and very much significant. The only real question was whether or not it was body wide and not localized to the brain.

Hopping off the corpse, Shepard brushed past the elderly amphibian as he was still trying to figure out the composition of Grey Wolf and gripped the blade with both hands. The silver/dimeritium blade, made by the elvish master swordsmith Eibhear Hattori for each witcher that passed the Trial of the Sword, easily cut into the deceased relict's flesh, hacking out a sizable chunk. The crowd's murmuring increased three fold as he did so, but Wolf couldn't find it in himself to care for their opinion. Just so long as C-Sec paid up in the end.

"Yep," the witcher nodded as he inspected the cold flesh, "Tumors. Damn thing had cancer."

"Cancer? Radiation? No, reactors are shielded, water pipes below radiation line."

Shepard really didn't want to hear the rant continue, so came up with the correct solution, "Element zero. Causes the same kind of tumors in humans and elves if they aren't treated for exposure."

"Yes… yes… Sewers exposed to mass effect fields to control flow, creature broke containment fields, suffered exposures…"

"Accelerated its growth and regeneration," Wolf finished, severing a tumor, throwing it in a case, and headed back to his Cache.

He quickly loaded the samples into the case and grabbed one last blue vial. Shepard popped the top and tossed the liquid onto the corpse before waggling his fingers, a wave of flame hitting the cadaver and igniting the blue liquid, quickly consuming the body.

"Interesting, why destroy the corpse? Disease control? No, filters handle any contaminant. Limiting general knowledge of creature? Ensuring usefulness? Plausible, witchers work for money, wouldn't get paid as much if everyone knew how to fight creatures…"

"Kayran was a mutant. Could regenerate from nearly anything I did to it. Nothing says it couldn't have eventually put itself back together. Best to not take any chances."

Water boiled as the chemically propelled fire continued to vaporize the corpse, almost none of it left at this point. Shepard closed the Cache and walked up to Vakarian who was standing next to a C-Sec patrol car, "Let's go, I'm done here."

The blue face painted turian looked to the dark plated one who was clearly in charge, the commander giving his assent, "Bring him by HQ, we'll have his payment arranged by then and we can debrief him there."

…

Shepard walked up the ramp into his personal transport five hundred thousand credits richer. The ship he owned was fairly typical of a witcher, essentially just a souped up dropship. FTL capable, an upgraded fusion reactor, thirty percent more mass, mostly just living space, and twin thirty millimeter cannons for taking down griffins, draconids, and the occasional pirate dropship.

The old craft was a retired turian model he had bought in a Volus shipyard after a contract for a leshen on a salarian colony had netted him a hundred thousand credits. It was barely spaceworthy at the time, but the volus merchant was kind enough to throw in an upsized mass effect core capable of FTL if the witcher took care of a group of pirates waylaying material transports out in the system's asteroid belt.

Ever since then, Wolf had been upgrading the vessel, adding on space, upgrading the reactor and the engines, installing the weapons, even some rudimentary kinetic barriers, though they weren't capable of taking on much damage. Shepard would be the first to admit it wasn't necessarily pleasing to the eye, the additions were a slightly different color than the original body, and there were dents and scratches across the surface, but both wings were straight and level, the life support worked, and it could survive escape velocity and reentry all while keeping everything inside relatively safe and unharmed.

The ramp led directly into what had originally been a troop bay, but was now half cargo space, half hydroponics bay where the walls were lined with various weapons and tools and a couple of weapons lockers were shoved into one corner near a bench. Various plants and herbs sat on one end, under a jury rigged lighting system, hastily glued together plastic pipes feeding each pot water at a steady pace before exiting and passing through the water recycler.

The other side of the little bay was taken up by a few crates containing food, parts for the ship, and weapons and hardware picked up on any contracts he would take on pirate bases or merc companies that he would sell to scrap companies or even the occasional gunshop. Speaking of which, he had a crate full of old assault rifles to sell. Probably would have to take them to a scrap shop as they were old enough to have been used in the Krogan Rebellions, still, credits never hurt anyone.

Shepard laid out his armor on a stand and set it in the middle of the room, over the sole drain in the cargo area. He was going to have to clean the pieces thoroughly as more than a few particulate nasties from the sewage still clung to the crooks and crannies. First things first, however, he needed a shower himself.

Throwing his weapons on the workbench, the dark haired witcher stepped through the door at the front of the cargo bay and into the cockpit where a ladder awaited to whisk the monster hunter to the living quarters of the vessel. The sleeping quarters, essentially just a bed, a desk with a computer terminal, and bathroom. Trophies from previous hunts hung on the wall, a forktail skull, a chort's horns, a Blood Pack warlord's battered and bloodstained breastplate.

What was most interesting to Wolf however, was the shower tucked away in the corner of the bathroom, and the bed afterwards. It had been a long day.

…

 _A young woman with red hair stood on a hill side overlooking Beauclair. There was a look of contentedness on her face as she looked down on the beautiful capital of Toussaint. Then she looked back at him, a smile breaking out across her face._

" _Uncle Jon! You were right, Toussaint is incredible!"_

 _Shepard could feel a smile break out across his face, "I take it you're enjoying your time baby girl?"_

 _Green eyes rolled hard as he approached, then wrapped him up in a powerful embrace, his witcher armor clanking against her N7 armor._

" _I was until you called me that stupid nickname."_

 _The witcher smiled as he held onto the young woman, his sensitive nose picking up the smell of sweat, blood, and ash on her crimson locks._

" _You're the only family I got," he said as they parted, there was a sharp pain in his arm, "I have to take advantage of it."_

 _Dirt streaked across her face as her smile turned wry, "Is that why you're always getting me things?"_

 _The coppery taste of blood was on his tongue as he replied, "Spoiling is just as rewarding as being spoiled."_

 _There was a great boom in the sky as something entered the atmosphere, "Well stick to that, and avoid the nicknames!"_

 _The glow of fires framed the young woman's face as he laughed, "C'mon baby girl. Have pity on an old witcher such as myself."_

 _The sounds of gunfire and screams of the dying filled the air, "You're not old."_

" _Eighty eight! About sixty years older than you baby girl," in the background, Beauclair exploded as a great red beam struck the palace, leveling the entire mountain the city was built upon._

" _Sixty two, you old geezer," she laughed as a massive ship dropped from the sky, landing on the fireball that used to be Beauclair. Moans filled the air as shambling blue bodies began climbing the hillside, closing in on the two of them._

 _Once more they embraced as the young woman whispered into his chest, right next to his wolf's head medallion, "I love you uncle Jon."_

" _I love you too, baby girl."_

 _The great wall of dust, smoke, and heat struck them at the same time the cybernetic corpses reached them…_

Shepard jolted awake, sweat clinging to his skin as the sheets fell away from him.

"Damn witcher juice…" Wolf grumbled as he threw the sheets off his body and stepped over to the drawers holding his comfort clothes, "never have a good sleep after knocking one down."

…

 _Your famous._

Viper eyes narrowed as they regarded the message on the orange interface of his omnitool. Aria T'loak had just messaged him, updating him on what was apparently his new celebrity status. The Pirate Queen had even gone so far as to include a video link.

The witcher flicked his wrist and sent the video file to a nearby display on the wall, overriding the rifle schematic that had been there before. As the screen prepared to play, Shepard grabbed his pipe sweep and one of his two multipurpose pistols.

On the screen, an elven woman appeared, the graphics around her indicating that she was on some sort of news station on the Citadel. The logo on the corner read Citadel News Now, and the headline beneath her read, Monster on Presidium; Witcher Saves the Day.

"Oh boy," Shepard mumbled to himself. This wasn't good.

" _This morning, a peaceful day on the Presidium was interrupted, violently, when a creature known as a Kayran, erupted from the waters of the Lake."_

Amateur video of the cephalopod breaking through the water, a certain witcher clutched in its tentacles, replaced the blonde she-elf's face, _"Kayran's are large, squid or octopus like creatures, and are as dangerous as monsters come, and are not restricted to the water's edge for their hunting. Such creatures have been known to take down entire battalions of soldiers. Needless to say, anyone nearby would have had a very bad day."_

The video shifted to the blonde elf's face again, this time with a smile on her face, _"Fortunately for the people on the Presidium, C-Sec was aware of its presence in the sewers, and had hired help in the form of a witcher."_

The video changed again to show more amateur footage, of Shepard himself standing on the bridge, sword in hand as the Kayran towered over him. The footage then jumped to a more distant shot of him plunging Grey Wolf into the beast's head. Likely wanting to keep the more gruesome, up close view from the eyes of the innocent.

" _C-Sec has not released the wither's name, or the bounty for Kayran, but one thing is certain, the Citadel owes its safety to this man."_

Then the worst possible thing that could happen, did. A close up picture of Wolf's scarred, ugly mug appeared on the screen, in excruciating detail. Anyone who saw that picture would be able to recognize him immediately. It was bad enough that people recognized him as a reviled and hated witcher, now there was going to be attention given by people who thought he was some sort of hero.

His arm beeped in a bid to gain his attention. It worked, and Shepard saw yet another message from T'loak. _Still as sexy as ever on that mugshot._

The witcher smirked at that. He had been with his fair share of women in his eighty three years, even other asari once he and his homeworld had been introduced to the galaxy at large. But never had Wolf come across a woman as voracious as the Pirate Queen. He still remembered his last night at Omega, when Aria had invited him into her bed, and then found himself cuffed to it, as the thousand year old matriarch ravished him.

This time, the warrior/mage/rifleman/medic/scholar bothered to tap out a reply.

 _You're the only one who thinks that._

It didn't take long for his omnitool to light up with her reply.

 _Please, I've got maidens shaking their ass on stage keeping their eyes open for the next time you swing through. Like they've got a shot._

The witcher quickly responded.

 _I hadn't noticed, maybe I'll stop and take a look around the next time I come through Afterlife._

The holographic interface flashed again.

 _That ass is mine, witcher. For as long as you live._

That was his Aria, burning desire and a frosty demeanor all wrapped up in a purple skinned beauty.

Their relationship, if you could call it that, was, for the most part, purely physical, and likely not exclusive, though Shepard could never be sure, as he didn't exactly have the time, nor the resources, to stalk the Pirate Queen of Omega.

Not that it mattered ultimately. The Path didn't exactly allow time for romantic entanglements, only the occasional physical ones. As such, the current arrangement worked just fine.

The witcher turned back to his sidearm, inspecting the weapon casing for anymore traces of sewer slime or moisture in general. In some respects, these pistols were more important to his career as a monster hunter than his sword. The hand cannons could fire any registered ammoblock, be modified in hundreds of different ways, and most importantly to a witcher, the had a secondary, much wider, barrel for firing .45 caliber silver slugs.

Some Schools had tried simply using silver ammo blocks and firing shavings in the same fashion as the standard mass accelerator rounds but found the results to be severely lacking. In order to magnetically propel silver through the barrel, the silver had to be put in an alloy with iron, nickel or cobalt. The resulting effect was a reduction in muzzle velocity and an erratic flight path as the shavings didn't have the speed to make up for a lack in aerodynamics.

Then there was the fact that the alloys didn't have the same effect on monsters as pure silver did. A man firing the standard silver slugs could take down a pack of drowners with ease, provided his aim was true, but using the iron/silver alloy, one man would struggle to take down a single necrophage before his weapon overheated. In fact, the silver shavings were so ineffective, it was better to use standard munitions against Post-Conjunction creatures than silver ammoblocks.

That was why the School of the Wolf, School of the Bear, and the School of the Griffin all used pure silver slugs with chemical propellant. They had difficulty penetrating armored monsters, or creatures with thick hides like a Kayran, but for human or smaller sized creatures, like necrophages, lycans, small ogroids, and even some flying creatures like griffins or cockatrices the weapons were superb. To the point where Shepard rarely had to draw his sword if he was hunting down small groups of necrophages, or a lonely nekker.

Of course nothing would ever convince him to abandon Grey Wolf altogether. The sword was still by far the most effective weapon he had against the larger monsters. Fiends and chorts are too powerful to be taken down by the limited ammunition he carried. Forktails, wyverns, slyzards, and basilisks have thick, hard scales that minimized any damage bullets could really do. And anyone facing a shaelmar or arachas, or leshen, or golem could just go ahead and forget their gun while they were running away, because it would be about as effective as a bottle of water against a rampaging forest fire.

Modern technology combined with over a thousand years experience forging swords allowed Master Hattori to craft each witcher a blade so fine that it easily could qualify as a piece of art. Such a life would be a waste for one of these swords, however, and an insult to the master elven smith who had crafted it. It was a weapon, to be used and used well. Shepard remembered what Eibhear had told him and Artur when they had been presented with their swords.

 _Not so long ago, witchers carried two swords. Silver for magical beasts, steel for all else, but as Geralt of Rivia once told me, so long ago, both swords were for monsters. This one is no different._

As Shepard ran the wetstone over the edge, carefully maintaining the fine edge, he looked over the brilliant sheen for any signs of stress, cracks, or bending. There was none, of course. But there wasn't a single witcher alive that didn't look over his sword after every single fight. Besides, more than a few times after a massive fight Shepard had had to take Grey Wolf back to Master Hattori for repairs.

Not this time, fortunately. Hattori held to the witcher's code, and did naught for free.

With his weapons checked, and armor cleaned, Shepard finally set upon plans for what to do with his half million credits. He could upgrade his arsenal. The School of the Bear had recently come out with a heavy ballistic weapons system, capable of tracking shuttles and slyzards alike. They were abhorrently expensive, and not fully tested, but Shepard, like most witchers, wasn't just a warrior, or a scholar, or mage, or healer, he was also a competent engineer. He had, after all, overhauled his personal vessel himself, and had modded his own pistols and rifle with custom, self built parts. Figuring out the kinks on a missile launcher shouldn't be too terribly difficult provided the basic science behind the device was sound.

He'd have to talk to Jared, a giant beast of a man, from the School of the Bear, and look into it.

His ship could always use an overhaul. Most of the systems running the vessel were outdated, even by quarian standards. That'd be quite the stay though, and likely require an extra set of hands. The life support system needed new oxygen recyclers and new heating coils. The weapons needed new targeting hardware, and software but the old controller couldn't handle the updated software. It did, after all, predate the Quarian Exile.

He could always update the weapons systems themselves, get a five kilogram main cannon. He had the spare power for it, but it would require some structural rebuild, hence the second set of hands. New barriers wouldn't be a bad thing. The ones he had now couldn't stand up fighter fire for more than a few shots.

The more he thought about this, the more Shepard realized that it would be more akin to taking the damn thing to dry dock and having it completely overhauled by an entire crew of iron workers and technicians. But if he did that, he'd likely only be able to afford one or two enhancements, while doing it himself and grabbing some quarian on their Pilgrimage would let him pay for all of them, and probably have enough left over to by one of those specialized missile launchers from Jared.

There was one option still on the table, he could just take the credits to Illium, and waste them all on women and booze. Old Master Garth might not approve, but the old witcher wasn't there to tell him no.

But… there was no way he'd go through with it… Instead, Wolf simply opened up various screens to various parts shops around the Citadel. First thing was life support, then barriers. Then he'd see what was left over.

Actually, first thing, Shepard opened up a site showing all unclassified manifests of ships coming into the Citadel from the past month through next week. First thing was to find some help.

…

Kara'Tiil nar Moreh couldn't believe it. She had been on her Pilgramage for two months, and it still amazed her. Her father and mother had warned her, but she had been somewhat skeptical. Why would everyone choose to actively hate her just because she was a quarian? It wasn't logical, and a wasted effort. Hating her didn't make her disappear, it didn't make her any more honest, in fact it had the opposite effect. She had stolen for the first time in her life yesterday, just to feed herself.

She had hopes of being a biologist at some point, helping Admiral Xen find away to fix or at least start fixing their species devastated immune system. For that reason, she was looking for a Pilgrimage gift along those lines. Some new medical technology, or study and research on various disease resistant species. Unfortunately, even the small furry animals the humans had introduced hated her. How could she study anything if they refused to do anything but snap and bark at her everytime she was near?

At least the really short and really hairy humans were always nice to her. Even so nice as to let her stay with them, for a short while, but they were harassed every moment by their turian and asari neighbors just for their act of kindness. Kara couldn't blame them for kicking her out after that, just her being there was putting them in danger, and they could have been much less kind about the way they did it.

As she crouched down on the bunk she had managed to grab at the shelter and finished off the last of the dextro paste she had stolen the day before, the young quarian looked at the other occupants of the shelter. It was quite the mixed bag. Some were turians who had seen heavy engagements in their time with Hierarchy Navy and had suffered extremely for it, unable to reintegrate back into society with their families and friends.

There were, of course, salarians and asari there, though extremely few in number, but what truly caught her eye, were the humans. They looked so much like quarians in the face that it was a little unsettling at first. It was like looking into some sort of sick joke of a quarian face. The eyes were miscolored and slightly misshapen, their jaws were too thick and wide, and their ears stuck out from their head like some sort of hideous tumor. Honestly, humans looked just like quarians, really ugly ones.

Though who was she to judge? No one would ever see her face anyway, so did it really matter if she thought they were ugly? Maybe if they could see her face, they would think she was ugly, maybe she was ugly. Who was she to say bioluminescent silver eyes were anymore or less attractive than brown ones, or blue, or yellow.

Actually, those yellow eyes were very striking, but not because of the color. The pupils, they were like a reptile's! Thin, vertical slits that gazed over the room, making those caught under their predatory stare squirm uncomfortably. Then they settled on her, a spear of ice shooting through her back in fear of that cold and calculating look.

Kara had to force herself to look the human over as he started closer. He seemed big, for a human male. Tall as some turians, with broad shoulders that looked like she could lay on and a narrow waist that gave him a menacing silhouette. Add on some thick black armor with silvery metal studs sticking out, a medallion around his neck in the shape of a snarling beast, and the handle to some sort of weapon sticking over his shoulder, and Tali was quite sure she didn't want to talk to this man.

What she wanted, and what she was going to get, were two different things, however, as the scarred human zeroed in on her.

"Kara'Tiil?"

Oh Keelah, his voice was not in the least bit reassuring, and was every bit as cold as his lizard eyes.

"I didn't do it!"

One dark eyebrow cocked high, she wasn't sure what that meant for a human, "I'm sure, but whatever 'it' is, that's not why I'm here."

Kara was confused. This man was clearly a thug, a criminal of some sort. She thought the turian vendor she had stolen the dextro paste from had hired him to teach her a lesson. Or that maybe someone thought she stole something else, or had wronged them in some fashion, or maybe they just thought she needed a lesson taught.

"Oh."

The furry faced human lowered himself to look her in the eye as she was sitting, "I'm doing an overhaul on several systems of my vessel. I need an extra set of experienced hands. I've got two thousand credits and a place to sleep for a week."

She wasn't an engineer! She was a biologist! And a good one! Granted, she likely knew more about vessel maintenance than most of the dockworkers on the Citadel, she had lived an three hundred year vessel for the vast majority of her life after all, and had, like all quarian children, spent a large portion of her childhood fixing broken and rundown machinery so that the Fleet could make use of them.

"I can't…"

Kara's stomach protested, loudly, much to the man's apparent amusement, though one could never tell from looking at his face, "I'll throw in all the nutrient paste you can eat."

Bosh'tet had her. She was helpless on her own, barely capable of feeding herself. She needed money, shelter, food, and protection, and he could provide all four in spades, if the two giant hand cannons under his shoulders were anything to go by.

She nodded finally, conceding to the situation she was in. Truthfully, were she any other Pilgrim, she would have jumped for joy. Easy credits and the ability work on alien technology. Tech from a brand new species no less! There was a serious possibility she could find a suitable Pilgrimage Gift doing this, not in the field she was looking for, probably, but it wasn't like there was a whole lot expected of her by others anyway. Just herself.

Just as she was getting up from the bunk to go with the ugly human, three C-Sec officers walked into the shelter, two turians and one human, and made a beeline for her. This wasn't going to be good.

"You, quarian, stay where you are, you're under arrest!" the lead turian barked.

Great, bosh'tet's really are serious about catching dangerous thieves who stole nearly a full five credits worth of food.

"What for?" the human asked, standing directly between her and the officers. What he was doing there, Kara wasn't sure, but she was fairly sure that he must be as dumb as he was ugly. C-Sec was an authoritarian military force masquerading as a police department. It was corrupt, with many higher level officers doing as they pleased, taking bribes from criminals, and arresting anyone they didn't like. That didn't mean these officers in particular were corrupt or overly zealous, but getting any officer upset is a good way to end up on the bad side of everyone inside the organization.

"She's a quarian, a vagrant and a criminal. She's coming with us, an you'd be wise to step aside."

The large human's head turned slightly, Kara assumed he was looking each officer in the eyes, though it was difficult to tell from her vantage point behind him. Suddenly, his hand shot up, fingers waggling, and a bright white light flashed, and a hazy cloud came over all three officer's heads.

"I think you'll find her quite innocent."

"Yes…" the second turian mumbled, "Innocent."

"I think you'll leave her alone from now on," the human continued.

This time it was the human that spoke, "Won't so much as look at her…"

"Then I think you'll go back to your homes, and thank your lucky stars you ran into a very, patient, witcher."

Witcher? What was a witcher?

"Many thanks, master witcher."

The three officers walked out, stiffly and strangely, as though they weren't entirely there. Everyone in the shelter watched them walk out, and then focused back on the ugly human, who stared back, a fierce gaze in his viper eyes, daring anyone to speak up, to react in any fashion.

"Let's go, girl."

Kara made a note to do some research on witchers.

…

After doing her part of research during what little free time she had, Kara wasn't sure if she should be terrified of this Shepard, or hate him, or love him, or find him irresistibly sexy. Okay, the last conclusion wasn't reached based on extranet research, just the fact that he liked to work without a shirt on. Which was unnecessary and unsafe, and certainly not something she was going to object to.

Currently, they were crammed inside what was essentially just a closet where the power regulators for the aft barriers were located, and Kara had a visor full of delicious, sweaty abs as she tuned the regulator while Shepard simulated various stresses the barriers might undergo.

"Alright, simulating rapid impacts…" the witcher rasped in that husky voice that suited his scarred body so well. There was this pink one that ran just over his belly button and cut down the side of his stomach, highlighting the muscles popping out of his skin and the single blue blood vessel running down from the tip of the scar and tracing down into his pants…

"Kara?"

A bead of sweat caressed one of his powerful pectorals and slid down between the two savory columns of…

"Kara!?"

"CALIBRATING!" a three fingered hand tapped at the omnitool on her wrist. Thankfully her purple visor covered her quickly reddening face. Just four days ago she had thought of him as ugly, and he wasn't handsome in the fashion she was used to. Quarian men had fair faces, almost feminine by human standards, with hair only at the top of their heads, and it was rare for any of the nomadic people to have scars, mostly because any wound that punctured their skin, also punctured their suit and subjected them to thousands of deadly contaminants that could kill them in hours. But she found that it took no time at all to redefine her standards of beauty when faced with the man before and above her.

She'd also have to redefine a lot of other standards she had because of him. Like thoughts on ancient fairytales told to children by their parents. Tales like the Man in the Reflection, or the vengeful spirits that would haunt old sections of the liveships. Not to even mention the stories of ancient beasts that would appear on Rannoch to take vengeance on evil people.

She had to reevaluate them, because to these humans, they were real, and in fact, were real to everyone now. Magic was spreading, influencing every habited planet within the Terminus already, and the estimated population of the fantastical and mythical beasts the humans had brought with them was exploding, seemingly thriving in what should be a hostile and unwelcoming galaxy.

In fact, the only thing doing better than these beasts, were the humans. In thirty galactic standard years, they had as many colonies under their control as the quarian's did at the height of their powers, a place that took them four hundred years to get to. And when she said humans, she was sure to mentally omit the 'Elder' races. Ninety five percent of the Alliance's population was human, and they were quickly changing that number. Elves, dwarves, halflings, they all lived longer than humans, Keelah, the elves lived longer than asari! But it was the humans that were achieving great things.

More importantly to her immediate situation, however, was the existence of these witchers. One source told Kara that witchers were hideous, horrible things. Lower than the creatures they hunted down with impunity. That men like Shepard were killers, cold and calculating, totally devoid of feeling and compassion. Liars, cheaters, covetous creatures that cared only for the money they could make collecting lives.

The young woman had certainly seen how cold he was. The man hadn't so much as smiled once in the past four days. He didn't laugh at jokes, he didn't get angry at the various racist comments she heard directed at him, he didn't even seem to care for the desperate state of some of the station's inhabitants they passed who were somewhat less than well off. He didn't seem to care for anything at all.

But that was in direct contradiction to his actions. He had put a lot of effort into this vessel, when he likely could have just bought a nicer, newer ship. It seemed he was at least sentimental about it. There were the trophies in his quarters, and the various mementos that could be found around the ship. Kara had also took a peak at his contacts list in the ships communications logs. The witcher had dozens of people under the category; friends. Heartless creatures didn't name people friends, did they?

"Done," Kara said as she deactivated her omnitool and closed the panel door. Standing up, however, proved to be slightly more difficult as her visor got a much closer look at the human's perfectly imperfect skin, leaving a sweaty imprint of the post pubescent quarian female's overactive sex drive.

The suit quickly cleared the sweat, thanks to the automatic cleaning systems of the suit, but it was having a much harder time between her thighs. Kara hated being nineteen, it was torture being trapped in this suit, unable to act upon any of her desires. It was one of the reasons she was so determined to find a way for her, and all quarians to escape.

"Thanks, kid," the witcher said as he squeezed out into the cargo hold.

Kara followed him out, always surprised a little bit to find the space so familiar to her. It was old, run down, just like the Migrant Fleet, just like her family's little apartment on the Moreh, though the plants were unfamiliar, and the weapons and tools on the walls were a definite departure from home.

Shepard leaned his muscular frame over the computer terminal on the work bench, then pulled back, an orange card in his hand, "Two thousand credits, as promised. Plus a little something, for putting up with me."

She smiled behind her mask, and subconsciously leaned in a little closer towards the 'ugly' human, "It was nothing… Thank you. You've been kinder than most to me."

He had kind eyes, Kara realized. They were cold, and fierce, but they were exceedingly kind as they regarded her, "Don't tell anyone. People think they can cheat a nice person."

Nar Moreh giggled a little before asking the witcher, "What's next for you?"

He took a deep breath as he looked towards a screen displaying the names of several worlds, a person next to those worlds, as well as some minor details about some sort of contract, "Got five jobs lined up. Slyzards in Bekkenstein, apparently they have a fairly large patriarch causing trouble for them."

The screen showed some sort of pale skinned creature with large wings, no eyes, and fire spewing from its mouth.

"Then someone was dumb enough to try and use a cyclops as heavy labor on a mining colony, one contract for necrophages on a pirate outpost. Turian military wiped out the pirates, stacked the bodies outside, then found the pirates had been hoarding ghouls, scurvers, even a grave hag. Now they can't get anywhere near the base without destroying it."

The witcher, tragically, put a shirt on, before continuing with his summary, "Then there's murders in Elysium. Corpses ripped apart and chewed up, sounds like a lycan, then… Eden Prime is fully adapted, and ready to get rid of their terraforming leshen."

That was when the answer to her question hit her. The question about how she was to study species without being in danger of getting torn to pieces.

"What do you do with the bodies?"

Viper eyes blinked at the question, "Usually perform autopsies, if the body is in good enough shape."

That was _perfect!_ This provided all the access to unique specimens she needed! This was an unparalleled opportunity, and to think, four days ago she was ready to reject it outright.

"Take me with you!"

The dark haired human shook his head rapidly, "What?"

"Take me with you! I've studied biology, I can help you perform autopsies, and judging by the state of your ship, I'm a better engineer than you, I can help maintain your ship! Perform repairs while you're on missions! Buy supplies you need, anything, but I need this, please!"

"Why?"

"I need it… to be accepted back into the Fleet. It is a part of my people's traditions. I'm on a Pilgrimage, and need a Gift to be accepted by a new captain, and since the ship and captain I wish to serve under are a little more demanding than most, I need a good one."

He looked somewhat skeptical still, "This is dangerous, besides, what do you want from me?"

Kara held out her hands in pleading, "Not you, the creatures you're hunting! They have fantastical properties, I want to learn about them. See if any of them can be adapted to help my people, please, let me come with you. You're my best option."

Shepard crossed two well defined arms across his broad chest, bringing one hand up to scratch his beard, "Well, I suppose I need to know one last thing…"

"What? Name it!"

"Where are you gonna sleep?"

…

Saren Arterius poured another shot of turian brandy. The Spectre looked around the bar, nothing but good turians, and one human who looked so average, it was unsettling. It had been twenty seven years to the day his brother Desolas had died, slain by one of those so called 'witchers'. That was why he was in this little bar on this little space station, to drink to his brother's memory.

Fucking humans, they were going to be the death of the galaxy, and everyone was just letting it happen. The Council stroked their newfound pets and their so called 'benefits'. Magic… Charlatanism is what it was! There was nothing special about those savage creatures, only their propensity for breeding and feeding.

Something had to be done. Those monsters of theirs were running amok, multiplying throughout the galaxy almost as fast as a colony of vorcha left alone with sex pills, and they thought they could get away with it, feign ignorance. Saren knew that it was no coincidence that humans were becoming radically more powerful, even as the monsters grew ever more plentiful. It was all a scam, a farce, a façade, to make the Council, and the galaxy at large, dependent upon the humans and their witchers.

The turian could see the future, the Alliance standing above a broken and beaten galaxy, imposing their will with their army of mutated freaks. Keeping them all docile with their ferocious creatures. None others could see it, not even the Turian Councilor Sparatus, who had called him paranoid over the whole thing. That human ambassador, Regis, he was poisoning the Councilors mind with his colorful speech. The gray furred human was sickening for Saren to so much as be around, but Sparatus, Tevos, and Valern all delighted in his company, as did nearly everyone else who spoke with the bastard.

Now Saren preferred to spend his time in the galaxy's little crossroads, a place where choices were made. He just needed to make the right one.

"You're absolutely right."

The gray plated turian looked up sharply at the voice, finding the strangley unremarkable human sitting across the table from him, "But is the right decision in the bottom of that bottle?"

The Spectre looked down at the blue bottle of brandy in his left hand, then back up at the human.

"You've the look of a man who knows what he wants, but doesn't know how to get it."

"Get out of here little human," the turian growled, subvocals making a very aggressive rumble.

The exceedingly normal human tutted at the Spectre, "Now that's not very polite, especially when I know of something that can give you exactly what you wish for."

Blue eyes narrowed as they looked down at the shaven headed human's brown eyes, "What is it?"

"Oh, but that's not how this works!" the man smiled, and Saren felt unsettled as the perfectly straight teeth glinted in the low light of the bar, "First, you ask for my help."

Maybe it was the booze, maybe it was desperation at the seemingly unsolvable human problem, but whatever it was, the turian found himself acquiescing to the human's request, "I need help."

"What do you wish for?"

"I wish for the power to ensure turian dominance for the next fifty thousand years. I wish to stand knee deep in the blood of humanity, and I wish to stand over the broken hope of all magic."

The human steepled his fingers together, the grin deepening and becoming more unsettling, "Are you sure this is what you wish for?"

Saren sneered, "It's all I've ever wanted."

"Done!"

The turian's omnitool pinged, a set of coordinates appearing on the display. When the Spectre looked back up to the human, he was set upon quite the feeling of alarm, as the exceedingly average human, was nowhere to be found.

Instead, there was a simple document lying on the table, his words imprinted upon it, and his name signed underneath, right next to another name.

Gaunter O'Dimm

 **Oh Shiiit!**

 **Don't know how I feel about this chapter but, whatever. Let me know what you guys think. The support has been overwhelming and I really appreciate it, even though it kind of set the standard a little high for future chapters.**

 **One quick question, what do you think about Aria? Is that too much for a lowly witcher? Or is it the perfect match? I'm kind of trying to draw parallels between this story, and the books. Familiar relationships and bonds that help make sense of the world I'm trying to meld together.**

 **Thanks for reading, and drop a review please!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Before you all jump over me, I'm well aware there are more than four witcher schools, and that Poviss exists and is a Northern Kingdom, as well as Lyria, Rivia, and Cintra.**

 **Now read up, and enjoy. And please, read the authors notes at the end before jumping to the review section to tell me I'm stupid. I have a plan in place, (the plan is to make it up as I go along), you guys are just going to have to be patient with me.**

Jane Shepard held her breath steady as her feet pounded the track beneath her, the column of recruits following her trying to hold to her example, though of course they were struggling a little bit. They hadn't been through six years of brutal N7 training to strengthen their hearts and lungs. But, that was why they were there, on Novigrad Station in geosynchronous orbit over the Homeworld, for these raw recruits to experience this training first hand.

As the running group rounded the bend, the dark grey surfaces surrounding them gave way, at least on the right hand side, to a thick glass pane, revealing the planet beneath them. It was night on this side of the planet, giving them a view of city lights blanketing the western coast of the Continent. Nilfgaard shone brightly in the south, starting a trail of white leading up through Toussaint, Cintra, Lyria and finally into the large Northern Kingdoms.

None of them were actual kingdoms anymore, but long in the past they had been separated into five main fiefdoms, Redania, Temeria, Aerdin, Kaedwen, and finally Kovir. One by one the royal lines fell, giving way to Nilfgaardian swords, and when the empire receded, giving way to nationalism as much as any external threat, the banners of kings never flew again, and one new nation was born, one large enough, and strong enough, to resist any other invasion attempt.

Novigrad itself shone like a second sun, the city of nearly ten million people created so much light it was hard to tell if it was actually on the coast, or inland on some sort of peninsula. The city itself was the major port for planet, with forty percent of all surface to space trade going through the capital city of the NK.

That was the reason for Novigrad station, in fact, though it had a very large military contingent and training facilities aboard. It even had huge docking arms designated solely for Navy use. That was where she had been just this morning, before she had offered to take some new recruits for their conditioning drills.

The window passed them by as they entered the two hundred meter long stretch towards the end of their run, where Shepard promptly shifted gears, her feet blurring and crimson hair flying as she raced down the rubber track. The recruits immediately followed suit, but after the drills Jane had put them through in the morning, the hour in the weight room, and their ten laps around the five hundred meter track, most of them were falling behind.

All except one, the Commander noticed through her periphery, a Zerrikanean man who was easily passing her up. As his long, easy strides took him past her quickly, where she noticed that he was not sweating terribly hard. Even with all of her N7 training, even with the ordeal in Elysium under her belt, the day's training had caused quite the torrent of perspiration to run down her fair skin, so either she had some sort of super recruit on her hands, or a slacker.

But, as the tall, tan man reached the end of the track and turned around, Shepard realized it was neither. The man wasn't even one of the recruits she had been leading all day, for no one in the Alliance military had a silver medallion in the shape of a bird's head, nor did they have cat eyes, and typically only veteran ground pounders came with that many scars.

"Alright!" the witcher's voice was somewhat jovial, "Is this what you guys do for training? This is fun!"

The rest of the recruits were crossing the line as Jane panted to catch her breath, her legs feeling the jelly effect of the day's training. Finally the crimson haired N7 had resumed her normal rate of respiration, and asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

The Griffin, as his medallion said he was, shrugged, "Came to collect on a bounty for some pirates in the Verge. Was told the Colonel who handed out the contract wasn't available till later, so I came to work out. Saw you guys doing drills, thought I'd join in. Looked like fun, and I was right!"

Jane narrowed her eyes at the witcher, "You saw a group of N Program recruits running conditioning drills, and thought it'd be fun?"

The bronze skinned man shrugged, "At the very least it'd eat up a few hours," he slapped the last recruit to cross the line on the ass as he passed, "Good hustle kid."

Shepard looked at the man, shock in her jade colored eyes, "How long were you with us?"

"You guys were doing sprints on the lines, the ones where you went to the first line, then back to base, then to the second line, then back to base…"

He had been with them the _whole day_? How had she not noticed him, firstly, and how was he at least not tired? Shepard had been training on a regiment similar to today's for years, and still she was exhausted. Sure she wasn't puking like the one elf in the corner, or laying flat out on the ground like shorter girl with brown hair, but she was going to be in pain tomorrow. Meanwhile, this witcher looked like he had stood out in the summer sun for an hour or two.

"Antoine of Gulet, please report to the armory, Colonel Strenger is ready for you."

The witcher looked up sharply at the voice calling for him over the PA system, "That's my cue," he stuck out one calloused hand, "Thanks for the workout…"

Jane took the hand, "Shepard, and no problem Antoine."

The Zerrikanean witcher cocked his head just a tad, "Shepard? You know, I know a witcher named Shepard. Of Undvik. But you're much better looking."

The N7 watched the man walk out of the training facility, presumably on his way to the armory, desperately wishing she could ask him a few more questions all of a sudden. Her grandmother, the only living relative since her parents had died in service to the Alliance years ago, had told her of her great uncle, and that he was a witcher. The two still apparently traded messages regularly, but Jane had never attempted communication with him, a product of her mother's views. The young woman still remembered quite a few uncomfortable Yule feasts where Jane's mother would make a comment about mutants, leading directly into an argument with her grandmother.

For a long time she had been embarrassed, afraid someone would find out about her blood relation to a witcher. It was similar, in her mind, to being related to a criminal, as though he had committed some atrocity. Jane had grown up knowing what most people knew about witchers, essentially nothing. This wasn't helped by the monster hunter's secretive ways, nor was it helped by more than a millenia of mistrust and fear.

Then, when she had joined the N program, her first action had been jointly performed with a witcher. Batarian slavers had set up shop one jump away from a well populated human colony, which a team of Alliance marines probably could have handled on their own, but in what was becoming a fairly common tactic for pirates and slavers, they had been buying necrophages from the black market to use as shock troopers, which was not something even the elite N program was equipped for. Thus, they had posted a contract, and a witcher from the School of the Viper appeared.

To this day, Jane could remember the way the Nilfgaardian witcher had moved, almost as though he were dancing. That silvery sword dancing in the light as it parted the rotted flesh of ghouls, rotfiends, and foglets. Every shot from the massive handcannon he carried with him had struck true, and every waggle of his fingertips had conjured up magic unlike any other she was familiar with. But all of that was to be expected of a witcher, even what little the average soldier knew of them.

What she hadn't expected, was just how knowledgeable the Viper had been. The man had been extremely well educated, and not just about the monsters he was dispatching, but about batarian society, psychology, weaponry, tactics, even physiology. He had directed them not to use stun grenades, as batarian eyes were better adapted to recover from bright lights than a human's, and instead they should use smoke screens, since four eyes were more likely to be confused by roiling clouds of opaque particulate than two.

The witcher had even patched up one of their wounded while the medic was busy keeping one of the slavers alive for questioning, and in the words of the doctor back on the frigate, he had done 'a hell of a job'.

It was then, Shepard had realized that witchers weren't the monsters she had been taught they were. They were people, highly educated, highly trained, highly developed, people. They did have a tendency to come off as cold, as the Viper had, but others were much more personable, such as Antoine. They looked unnatural, true, cat eyes didn't belong on a human face and some had unnaturally pale complexions from the mutations, but they weren't Post Conjunction creatures.

All that said, and they still unsettled Jane whenever one was around. Even personable ones always gave off the feeling that they were watching everything very carefully, like a lion eyes a herd of zebras, looking for the weak one, or the slow one, and every time he looks at you, you'll think the lion's found the one he wants.

This, and her mother's own views passing on to her, had held Jane back from trying to reach out to him. supposedly he was just a few years younger than her grandmother, but supposedly witchers lived a lot longer than the average human. How much, it wasn't known, for there was barely any information available on them. The Four Schools were well known, history, as were the basics of their mutations, enhanced speed, strength, reflexes, but any information on the specifics of their studies, their mutations, their training, were all carefully hidden, and Shepard couldn't blame them.

Centuries of pogroms and prejudice had reduced all the witchers in the world to a handful, clinging to existence by a thread as society progressed, seemingly forgetting about the monsters that had once plagued their land, for witchers had done an admirable job of pushing them back before becoming an endangered species themselves. Knowledge about the Post Conjunction creatures faded, and as a result, humanity was totally unprepared for the spike in monster population.

Now they held onto their secrets, and did their best to work on government contracts to avoid personal vendettas any customer might have. Plenty still did take private contracts of course, but the last time Jane had checked, there were around a thousand registered witchers among the Four Schools, and nearly seven hundred were on the Navy's active bounty roster, one Shepard of Undvik included.

She should just call him. Grandma Hroki would like that, but she was left with the difficulty of what to actually say to him. Hey, sorry we've never spoken before, it's just that for the longest time I thought you were an embarrassment to the family and a part of me still believes that?

Probably wouldn't start them off on the right foot.

Jane didn't have time for thoughts like that at this time, however, as she dried her hair after her shower in the locker rooms and began putting clean fatigues on. She had a meeting with her new CO Captain David Anderson in just an hour. Dress was informal, but stinking of sweat was probably not a good way to greet her new captain.

"Can't believe that guy," one recruit said from the other side of the lockers, probably talking to one of the others in the training group, "Who the hell does he think he is, just jumping into training like that?"

"Just the way witchers are," another one replied, "They don't teach those mutants manners. Probably wouldn't be able to learn anyways. No emotions and all."

Shepard frowned, but not in anger. She was more curious, wondering if they had actually ever even seen a witcher before Antoine.

The first one carried the conversation, "They should keep those things separate from the rest of us. Who knows what kind of diseases he could have gotten from some nasty ghoul."

A third voice came in, "I think your personality should take care of that Alonso."

"Hey fuck you, I'm serious!"

The conversation died off as the rest of the recruits laughed at the poor Alonso, and Shepard quickly finished dressing and headed towards the docking ring where she was to meet Captain Anderson at their new vessel, some sort of experimental stealth frigate. Jane wasn't familiar with the details, especially since its construction had only recently been declassified to her. fortunately she had another two months to become familiar with the workings of the ship before going on their maiden mission. A jaunt to Eden Prime and back.

Maybe she'd have time to compose a letter.

…

Thirty years since the First Contact War and introduction to the fact that they were not alone. Sure there was the mass relay in the home system, and the Prothean ruins they had found on the other side of the relay, but they had long since been dead. Confirmed extraterrestrial life that was going to flip life as they knew it on its head.

Not much had changed for the Wolf in those many years since he had boarded that turian cruiser, bank account a little fuller, and captured it, killing all essential personnel, capturing the leader of the invasion, and then killing him too.

Nope, Shepard of Undvik was still stuck hunting down monsters, trudging through kilometers of wilderness, fighting with everything he had, and taking his knocks to boot. The last time he had been in Kaer Morhen, the specialized doctors there had told him he had another hundred years before he started to slip out of his prime, but Freya be damned if he didn't wake up feeling a twinge in his knees, or a knot in his back more mornings than not.

Still, it wasn't a bad life, not many people got to trek this high into the equatorial mountain range of Bekkenstein at sunset. The view was breathtaking as oranges and reds lit up the horizon, giving way to deep purples higher in the sky, where the foreign stars began leaking through.

The witcher's attention was taken away from the view as his hiking partner finally caught up to him. The grey bearded dwarf's short legs might have made it difficult to keep up with the witcher, but if he had been trekking along this trail with anyone other two legged creature in the galaxy, chances were he'd have left them behind, for no one, save a physically fit witcher, could outwalk a dwarf. Especially through mountains or rugged terrain.

"You humans," the short, stout facsimile of a man said with his people's trademark accent, "Always so damned impatient. Slyzard's not fooking goin anywhere."

"Just eager to please. Trying to show a little 'can do' attitude."

"Bah!" the dwarf scoffed at the mutant's words, "More like trying to get yeself away from me!"

Shepard smirked, as much as he was capable of anyways, Hroki had called it a ghost of a smile once, "Why would I do that, Goran?"

"Not gonna trade barbs with ye, witcher," Goran continued to reprimand as he worked around the stony hill top, "That much wit'd be an extra five percent on my commission fee!"

"Another five percent?" Wolf asked, the barest hint of incredulity tracing his voice, "On just this one, or all five you set up for me?"

The dwarf checked his omnitool as he replied, "Might make it a standing fee, put in the wee print."

Shepard chuckled quietly as he followed his 'agent' to a boulder. Goran, being a dwarf and therefore not entirely concerned with other's opinion of himself, liked to fancy himself somewhat of a talent agent for mercs and anyone willing to fight for money, witchers included. The gruff and cantankerous dwarf was, for all his faults, honest, and as a result, most witchers who found themselves near the Citadel and in need of work would give him a call. Goran typically had one or two jobs in mind for a witcher.

This time he had had five, including one near his home on Bekkenstein, which had led to the pair stomping through the forested foothills of one of the planet's mountain ranges.

"There," he pointed a stubby finger at a clearing in the trees between them and the next, larger, stony hill, "That's where I saw the bloody thing."

"Big as a dragon you said," the witcher replied as he focused his enhanced eyesight on the clearing. The control he was able to exert over his body extended even to the shape of his eyes, by squeezing the muscles around them to better shape the cornea and distribute the light into his retinas. He could go from eagle vision, to telescopic without ever needing a tool.

"Fooking bigger," Goran replied, stretching his arms out, "Same one that's been picking off transports, I'm sure of it!"

It might not literally be the size of a dragon, but the trampled ground and flattened vegetation did indicate a slyzard far outside the range the witcher records considered normal. Carburized grass did confirm that the creature was in fact a fire breathing slyzard and not a misidentified forktail. Though it was unlikely that anyone misidentified the creature, considering that the colonists had purposefully seeded the pale, pyromaniac draconids here on Bekkenstein.

"Why did colony leaders purposefully seed slyzards here?"

Goran scratched at his beard as he answered, "Local wildlife. Big, cow like fookers. No natural predators and the sex drive of a she elf in her seventh decade! Bloody things were eating everything in sight and were trampling through the first settlements. If that weren't enough, the bulls were so aggressive they were attacking anyone they saw!"

"Couldn't hunt them down themselves? Or introduce a less dangerous predator? Wolves, perhaps."

The dwarf rubbed the back of his head, "See, I said cow like. I meant a cow wearing full plate armor with swords affixed to their heads, all capped off by a club tail."

That made more sense, and also explained the mess that had been made of the body down in the clearing. If the creatures were as armored as Goran suggested, the slyzard would likely have to get a little messy to get inside.

"How do you keep the slyzards from bothering the cities?"

"Small anti air guns. Doesn't kill 'em, just makes it hurt enough to keep them in the mountains, hunting down those bloody critters."

"Smart."

The dwarf nodded, proud of his colony's accomplishments, as he had every right to be, he was a founding member after all, "Innit? Some colonies form leshens to help with terraforming* after all, we had a different sort'o'problem. So, we used a different monster."

"I need to look for evidence, tracks, trails. You should be safe to head back on your own," Shepard told Goran, who looked a little uncertain.

"So close to dark? I've only ever walked this path in the day. I know predators like the night…"

"Not slyzards. They're day hunters, you've been walking through their territory during their most active hours."

"Comforting… and useful to know, might knock a few credits off my fee for that bit o' information."

"Can I get preferential rate?"

"Fook off ye mangy witcher! An get to it!"

Goran Corvay's words warmed the witcher's heart all the way to the scene of the 'crime'. At least it looked like one, with a charred an desiccated corpse in the middle of the clearing, trampled ground and smashed trees covered in blood and gore, presumably from the poor creature lying with its gut ripped open and insides cooked.

As always, a witcher starts with the corpse.

"Reptilian, herbivore, approximately two and a half meters in length. Too heavy to be carried off. Must have been at least twice the mass of a dairy cow," he began, his suit keeping an auditory record of the hunt process, just in case the monster proved the victor, "Armor plating is thick, but ultimately no match for draconid claws. Carburization patterns point to there being a lot of blood still in the body upon 'flambéing'. Means it was already dead. Most of the muscle tissue's been stripped clean. Creature left the guts for scavengers, but the smell of burnt flesh hasn't attracted any yet."

Nothing out of the ordinary with the corpse, other than its seemingly unnatural size, Shepard stepped back, still recording his observations, "Tracks are displaced from the body, means it was thrown to its resting spot. Ground shows signs of a struggle, must have still been alive when the slyzard started tearing it open. Tracks lead east, back to the foothills, displacement from the tracks means the attacker was coming from the south."

The witcher focused his viper eyes on the tree tops, "Broken branches to the south confirm that, draconid took a shallow trajectory, then took a steeper one to the west, towards the mountains. Multiple low hanging branches have been stripped of leaves, wind blow them off? Monster must have huge wings… hang on, what's that?"

Something was hanging off a low branch, something shiny and glinting in the waning sunlight, "Metal, stainless steel… part of a skycar's hull? Well, well, well… Goran was right. This is the same slyzard that's been attacking transports. Why is it carrying debris around with it though?"

Wolf looked towards the mountains, "Creature went west, males look for the highest peak to roost. Probably couldn't have gotten far with nearly a ton of meat in its stomach."

The monster slayer unslung his rifle, a semiautomatic fifty caliber gas operated assault rifle, and jammed a thirty round magazine of silver coated depleted uranium rounds. The core of depleted uranium would do the damage, the silver would peel off and stick in the wound, burning the beast and poisoning it over time. Thirty rounds probably wouldn't take it down, especially not one as large as the claw marks on the herbivore suggested it to be, but it would wound and annoy the beast, make his job as a swordsman that much easier.

As the witcher moved deeper into the wooded, stony hills, the sun finally dipped behind the horizon, shrouding the undergrowth in near pitch darkness.

…

A light pink hung on the western horizon, a result of the sun not being too far away from peaking over the edge and filtering through the mountains. The dull light from the still starry sky was barely enough for anyone to make out the scraggly slopes and rough plateaus. Any species not nocturnal would be hard pressed to find their way through this rugged terrain. Pitfalls appeared out of nowhere, and the ground was uneven, with loose piles of rocks that would give way underfoot and send a climber tumbling back down the slopes.

Shepard had no such difficulties, however, even without a dose of Cat. His pupils were expanded to nearly encompass his entire eye, allowing him to see his next step as quick, silent, and experienced feet moved the witcher through the mountain range.

He had found pieces of debris throughout this climb through the peaks, typically only every kilometer or so, but it was enough for the experienced hunter to narrow down the direction of the monster's roost. The Wolf was going to have to pick up the pace, however, if he wanted to catch the creature still sleeping. With dawn already leaking through in the western skies, the slyzard patriarch would soon wake up, then Shepard would have to spend another damn day out in the mountains, trying to set up a good ambush for a creature that can see better, smell better, and hear better than the witcher could, and he was already one of the most stimulus sensitive creatures in the galaxy.

Something shone in the starry light that still dominated the sky, about three hundred meters ahead of him on the gravelly shored slope. Another piece of debris perhaps? He picked up his already quickened pace.

Even a dwarf, capable of traversing nearly any terrain at an unmatched pace, would have had trouble moving as Shepard did. Though the rock was loose, and would slide under its own weight, the witcher had no difficulty easily slipping over the ground without making a sound, even with Grey Wolf, both hand cannons, and his rifle weighing him down. The pace he had kept through the night would have pushed the limits of a krogan, and yet Wolf was more than prepared to endure a fight that could last hours. Not that he was hoping for one. If he could, he'd kill the beast in its sleep.

As the witcher came upon the source of reflecting light, he realized it wasn't alone, as this particular slope was littered with shiny debris, almost as though something had purposefully placed it there. In the sunlight, it was likely that the entire mountain side shimmered and sparkled, but that still left Shepard wondering, what was the point?

Why was this creature collecting debris, presumably wearing some of them, and depositing the rest around what Shepard could only assume was its nest? This wasn't something that had been observed in slyzard behavior before, and there were entire preserves back on the homeworld monitored by witchers for the simple ability to monitor the monsters' behaviors. But that was why every witcher that could do an autopsy on their targets, did. These monsters were inhabiting alien worlds, and at every turn, they had underestimated the creatures' ability to adapt, physically and psychologically, to their new homes. Entirely new subspecies were appearing.

Who knows, maybe Shepard will be credited with the classification of the new Bekkenstein Dragon subspecies of slyzards.

A smell permeated the air, one of charred flesh and kerosene. The nest was nearby, probably over the top of the next ledge, at the top of the sheer cliff directly in front of him. One step in that direction was enough for his medallion to immediately begin jumping against his armor.

It wouldn't be the easiest climb, especially since he couldn't just throw an anchor to the top, hook it on something, and use the motor on his belt to pull himself to the top. Chances were he'd wake up the beast, or even worse, hook the monster itself. Still, Shepard's fingers were plenty strong from over seventy years of wielding a sword, having started training from the ripe old age of ten. And it wasn't like Kaedwen didn't have mountains for him to climb in his youth. He and Artur had spent a lot of their free time in their teenage years just climbing the Blue Mountains.

It didn't take him long to reach the edge, but Shepard halted, staying out of sight and pressing himself to the rock face, ear to stone, listening for the faintest shuffle or scrape of movement. All he could hear was his own heart, beating at a steady twenty four beats per minute, the trembling of his medallion against his chest, and a great inrush of air, followed by a massive exhale. The sound of a massive beast sleeping away the morning, likely still digesting its rather significant meal from the day before.

Using all the care he could, Wolf hauled himself over the edge, trying to keep his cool as he saw just how large the sleeping beast was. It might actually be as big as a dragon, a small one, but all the same, it wasn't something to be balked at.

It was curled up at the moment, so it was hard for Shepard to get a good estimate on the creature's size, but based on past experiences with the creatures, he could roughly estimate it to be about twenty five to thirty meters long, nearly three times as long as the average female. The males tended to be much larger, true, but the largest one on record to his recollection was nineteen meters long, a patriarch that had terrorized Ofier back in the eighteen hundreds.

The wings were a little anomalous as well. Typically draconid wings were so small it was difficult to see how the damned things actually flew. Of course they managed it, against all logical reasoning based on pure physics, of course being extradimensional and magical in origin, pure physics weren't necessarily limiting to the creatures. But this beast had wings that, when unfurled, must be nearly as long as the beast itself. Folded up at its sides, they were already very impressive, and they revealed long, muscular legs, complete with razor sharp talons at the ends of grasping digits. At least something wasn't completely different, well that and its scales were the same color.

Bones surrounded the nest it was currently curled up in, creating a barrier that Shepard would have to cross without making a sound, shouldn't be a problem for the very stealthy… Something was looking at him.

In fact, many somethings were looking at him. Small avian reptiles were perched all around the nest, and they were all awake, and all looking at him. They must live near the nest, scavenging off whatever the patriarch doesn't eat. Too small to be considered food by the massive monster themselves, the slyzard likely also provided protection from any predators they might have had. Of course this also offered an advantage to the great beast as well…

"Don't you dare…"

CAW!

C-CAW! CAW-AW!

A symphony of caws erupted as the scavengers, acting on some sort of pack instinct, tried to drive the dangerous invader off. Well, they'd probably succeed, so the witcher had to give them that, especially as the steady slumber of the slyzard hitched, followed by a twitching of wings, and the slow unfurling of its body. The 'eyeless' head reared up, savage teeth jutting out the top and bottom of its mouth as it swiveled to look for the source of the disturbance.

It found it.

Shepard dove out of the way as an inferno swept over the rocky ledge. Wolf came out of the roll, rifle at the ready, and focused the sights on the beast as it stood to its full height. He had been correct in his initial estimation, it was by far the largest draconid ever recorded, including all of the various rare subtypes of the typically very large basilisks.

Powerful, muscular legs flexed as it reared up, opening its toothy maw in an earsplitting roar and spreading its gargantuan wings in a display of size and power. Were Shepard not a witcher, it might have intimidated him, instead he found an opening as he squeezed off two shots into the creature's throat.

The roar cut off with a slight gurgle as the rounds punched through the soft tissue, but both shots missed the jugular and likely deflected off of the dense and powerful muscles of the neck. The wounds were likely painful, but unfortunately only served to annoy the beast as it moved towards Wolf in a rage.

Backpedaling as the slyzard charged, Shepard rattled off another three shots straight into the beast's head, but even the heavy depleted uranium rounds merely bounced off the thick shell protecting its head.

The witcher hit the ground as he once again dove to the side, away from the ledge, to avoid the charging draconid, and stayed down as the barbed tail followed, swinging over his head and hitting the gravel behind him. The impact sprayed rocks far and wide, belying the power behind the supposedly least dangerous part of the monster.

From the ground, Shepard popped off another two shots, this time directly into the center mass of the draconid, penetrating the hard scales, but not the thick, dense chest muscles. The mutated warrior had punched right through a krogan Tomkah before with these rounds, back when he had a contract set up on Tuchanka by some salarians who wanted different water, flora, fauna, and krogan samples. But this thing was no rusty old Tomkah. If he had come with another witcher, it was likely that they could have taken down the beast with their rifles, and never have to get to close to the thing, but witchers didn't work that way.

So as Shepard found his feet, the rifle hung by the sling across his torso, and Grey Wolf sang as it slid from its scabbard. The difference in effect between the two weapons was immediately obvious as the draconid's toothy, crocodilian jaws closed in and immediately reeled back, missing a large patch of scales and chunk of flesh on its nose.

The creature tried to roar in defiance and pain, but due to the wounds put on its neck, was only able to harshly growl. Well, harshly growl and whip its tail around again, attempting to, and certainly more than capable of, breaking the monster hunter's body in half. The Wolf was crafty, though, and had predicted the move, rolling forward and underneath the powerful tail, coming out right as the giant beast came back around to face the witcher.

With a mighty thrust, Grey Wolf dug nearly a foot deep into the thick chest muscles of the beast, splitting a hollow rib with the tip. Again the beast gurgled in pain, this time lashing out with a powerful leg and throwing the Wolf clear of it.

Using the separation, the beast prepared its fiery breath, a great gout building in its maw, and released, only for the flames to lick pitifully out of its crocodilian jaws a few meters, the rest shooting out in great spurts through the holes in its neck.

Also using the separation to his advantage, the witcher snatched up the rifle laying against his chest and lining up the laser sight with the wound inflicted by Grey Wolf.

The round struck true, silver shedding off the depleted uranium core and shredding the monster's guts and burning away at its insides. This time, instead of a gurgling growl, the creature managed an actual shriek of pain as it fell to its knees and wings.

Shepard scrambled to his feet, continuing to pelt the beast with rounds that added to the patriarch's misfortune, targeting the softer flesh at the joints and stomach, his ammunition finding a much better effect there as compared to the harder chest and head. The giant beast writhed in pain, spittle and flames spewing from its mouth as it attempted to scramble away from the source of its agony.

Finally it found a solution as it spread its wings in a swift motion, the wind lifting Shepard off of his feet and ending the assault on its body. A powerful flap sent gravel, bones, and any nearby scavenger birds flying away as it, despite being wounded, lifted its body from the ground in a bid to flee.

Wolf raised his rifle quickly, finding the slyzard in his sights and pulling the trigger, only to be rewarded with a click, "Fuck!"

It was getting away, no time to load a second magazine. He patted his belt only to find his bombs gone, fallen off while he had been rolling around on the ground. As of now, all he had was his sword, two pistols… and his butcher's hooks.

Cable already attached to the end of the hook, Shepard pulled one from his belt and wound up as Grey Wolf slipped back into its scabbard. The beast was severely wounded and its flight path was erratic, for it hadn't even made it more than twenty meters from the ledge when the witcher threw his hook.

The silver barb tipped tool hung in the air seemingly forever, lazily trailing after the draconid as it staggered through the air. At first Wolf was afraid the projectile would miss, but his aim had been true, as it snagged one foot of the beast, then his fear turned to a question he should have asked himself before throwing it. What now?

The slyzard had an answer, as it gave another powerful flap, propelling it beyond the length of the cable, and yanking the witcher right off the ground. The motor snapped off of his belt, but not before lifting Shepard over the edge of the cliff and sending him plummeting towards the gravelly slopes below. It had a similar effect on the beast, however, as the extra weight of the witcher, even for a brief second, proved too much for the slyzard's compromised physiology, and it too found itself falling hard.

Thinking quickly, Wolf's fingers twisted and an orange barrier appeared around the falling monster slayer, exploding upon impact with the ground, but breaking his fall enough for Shepard to roll with the fall without breaking his ankles. Unfortunately, the bursting bubble of Quen also dislodged the layer of gravel, and the dark haired witcher found the ground beneath him falling away in a landslide, right towards the fallen slyzard.

The creature had survived its fall, and despite its grievous injuries, was cognizant enough to be pissed at a certain witcher who happened to be sliding at an accelerated speed right towards it.

Shepard drew his sword, the monster snapped its jaws, and they both struck.

…

Kara held the shredded remains of an organ in her hands. She couldn't be entirely sure what it was supposed to be, partially because it had been ripped apart by one of Shepard's bullets, but also because she had never seen an organ like it before in her entire life. The young quarian woman had identified every other system and the various parts and pieces that go along with it, but this… thing, didn't make any sense.

"Learning anything yet?"

Keelah! What wasn't she learning? Dissections were nearly impossible to do in the Migrant Fleet, as a result, she had been forced to learn from digital textbooks and extranet lessons, but now? She was elbow deep in the guts of a fire breathing, flying reptile! For the first time she was able to actually study something, learn about it, learn about the process of an autopsy from first hand experience. Now, all that said…

"I still don't know what this thing does."

There was huff from the witcher, which Kara'Tiil had learned was as close to outright laughter as the mutated human got, "No one does. It's a defunct organ, a relic of a prior evolutionary offshoot. Probably had it since before the Conjunction."

"Why didn't you say something? I've been staring at this thing for the past ten minutes!"

Shepard shrugged at the young woman, "I don't know, maybe you had figured it out?"

She threw the organ in a sample container and put the container in the freezer next to the Kayran samples, "Bosh'tet."

Another huff of amusement, "I meant, are you learning anything about this particular specimen, compared to the ones on record?"

Ok, she had spent the last two hours inside the hold of the transport as the autopilot steered the ship towards the mass relay learning about this thing. Taking it apart as cleanly as possible, starting with the severed head. Prying the hardened shell apart to reveal that the thick armor was actually a natural one way mirror, allowing the slyzard to look out, but not for anything else to look in, had been a shock to the nomad. But as she found out as she kept digging, there were plenty of shocks to be found in just this one specimen.

"Well, clearly it's larger, as you noted in your transcripts. What I noticed first though, was that its wings are much bigger than its size should suggest, in regards to previous records."

"Why do you think that is?"

Nar Moreh mulled the question around in her head before asking a question of her own, "How do slyzards hunt? Do they travel long distances from their nests, or are they territorial?"

The witcher's pupils expanded slightly, still a slightly disturbing sight to Kara, though she was getting used to the extent of manual control he had over his body. Still, it was a good sign, she thought… maybe… at any rate, she believed he thought she was asking the right questions, "Territorial."

"Then I think it's an adaptation to their primary prey species. The Bekkenstien Rhinoceros is a migratory animal, and the slyzards need to follow them through their migration. That means longer flight times, and larger wings are more efficient. It also allows them to lift larger prey, though from what I understand of the rhinoceros, I don't understand how they are able to lift even an infant."

"Slyzards have the second highest weight to payload ratio of any known flying creature in the galaxy. Only archgriffins can lift more per kilo."

Kara shook her head, "Keelah, how did your species ever survive with these things on your homeworld?"

"Numbers, added to the fact that monsters were more likely to fight each other than actively hunt humans. Necrophages were by far our biggest obstacle. What else can you tell me about this particular specimen?"

"The methane sack next to the stomach is larger, but not in the same ratio with body size as the others, which I think says more about the wildlife here than the slyzard itself."

Shepard crossed his arms and cocked an eyebrow. The young biologist got the distinct impression he wasn't curious about the apparent aberration, or even why it existed. This entire process he had been quizzing her about the creature, testing her knowledge and though processes, and this time was no different, "Why do you think that?"

"These things acquire methane from their digestive process to use as the main propellent in their fire breath… Keelah I can't believe I'm saying that."

"Klixen on Tuchanka breath fire," the witcher pointed out.

"I know, but it sounds so much like a myth from Rannoch, the Rach'Teg. A mythical beast my ancestors once believed was the source of grassland fires," she explained as she reached in to the corpse and pulled out one of the creature's four… Four! kidneys.

"But I think the wildlife here doesn't produce as much methane when it's digested, which would explain the state of the kidneys, because if they can't break down more of the meat into methane, then there's more undigestible toxins it needs to filter out."

"Anything else?"

Kara shook her head, "Nothing noteworthy, standard specimen to specimen variations that are well within recorded norms."

Shepard nodded as he stepped away from the work bench where he had been cleaning his giant rifle, "That's in line with the observations I had made, though the methane bladder was interesting. I had figured the slyzard to just rain fireballs down on me for the duration, and instead it probably used fire only once or twice. Granted I had shot it twice in the throat."

The witcher came over and helped Kara shove the freezer over into the corner, already filled near to the brim with samples from some creature called a Kayran and this slyzard, "What was most interesting was its behavior."

The quarian removed her blood covered gloves and plastic apron that kept her suit from being directly exposed from the corrosive chemicals inside the slyzard's stomach, and placed it in the waste bin, "What was unusual about it?"

"It was attacking skycars, but not for food, there's plenty of that around. It was gathering up the shiniest pieces of debris and carrying them back to its nest, spreading them around in some sort of display."

The young biologist shrugged, "What's unusual about that? The small flying reptiles around here do the same thing. Males gather the shiniest bits to spread around the nest in an attempt to attract a mate. I observed the practice while you were hunting the slyzard."

The scarred human's face twisted at the her mention of the smaller flyers and their mating rituals, "Slyzards have never been known to do that… why would they start now?"

Kara shrugged, "Maybe they watched and learned."

The witcher focused his viper eyes on her, sending a jolt of fear through the young quarian at their intensity, "That's a disturbing thought. If they can learn that, what else are they learning?"

Shepard punched the control panel mounted on the wall at one side of the cargo bay, causing impermeable mass effect fields to appear around the corpse. Another punch and a crudely synthesized voice rang out.

 _Decontamination in progress._

Intense jets of blue flame appeared within the barriers, so hot Kara could feel them through her suit at the other side of the ship. It was nothing compared to what the corpse was experiencing, however, as the beast was quickly vaporized and neatly vacuumed up into a holding tank, then quickly vented into space.

"How much did that upgrade cost?"

The witcher, who still looked lost in thought, shrugged, "Was installed at Kaer Morhen, Kaedwen about fifteen years ago. Before then I had to ride around with the corpses until I reached an atmosphere I could just dump them into."

"That's not what I asked."

The ugly, sexy, human shook his head, "I'm sorry, what was the question?"

"You're really bothered by that whole mating ritual thing," the young woman instead chose to point out the obvious instead of repeating her question.

Shepard supported himself against the wall with one hand as he looked down at the ground, "At every turn, witchers, and humanity in general, has underestimated monsters. Even on the Homeworld, they're constantly adapting to our tactics, and to the changing environment. When they spread out through the galaxy, helped by black market traders, Salarian STG, and colonists who had unique environmental problems that could be solved by monsters, they adapted to those new environments. They're taking over these new worlds, evolving at a speed that should be impossible, though impossible is a word that doesn't apply to these things."

He pushed off the wall and started towards the cockpit, "But for the most part their psychology has stayed the same. But if that's evolving, if they're becoming smarter on top of everything, well then the galaxy has a real problem on their hands."

"It's gonna take some time to get to the next contract, why don't you read the bestiary entry on cyclops then get some rest," he finished before the door to the cockpit closed.

Another beast! She already had more alien genetic materials set aside for her testing than the Migrant Fleet had managed to scrape together in the last decade, and now she was going to add to it! Kara already had several idea's in mind for the slyzard parts she had harvested, though it would have to wait until they made their way to Omega apparently. Shepard claimed to have a lab complete with all the necessary testing equipment set up in an apartment there. He said he had earned it on a contract for something called a garkain.

The young woman wasn't entirely sold on the idea of going to Omega, there was a reason she had chosen to go to the Citadel despite the significantly more numerous opportunities on the asteroid based station, but if that's what it took to get a Pilgrimage Gift special enough to get noticed by Admiral Daro'Xen, that's what she'd do. Even if Praza was probably on that station somewhere… Bosh'tet.

…

"Subject on Bekkenstein after spending week on Citadel, making upgrades to ship. Took quarian girl with him, possible mechanic, will investigate further. Fought ornithisaur on Bekkenstein, slyzard, presented trophy in form of severed head, took trophy with him. Too bad, would have liked to study cranium."

Mordin Solus walked through the crowds in the spaceport of Bekkenstein's capital city, murmuring into his omnitool as he made his way towards his transport. The largely human population gave him odd looks as he jabbered on, the salarian had found that his speech patterns and hyper activity was a little intimidating to non salarians, and was therefor the subject of many odd, and curious looks from passerby's.

"According to Goran Corvay, subject has multiple contracts, will intercept in Elysium. However, have time. Contract not for three weeks, will attempt to acquire secondhand knowledge of witchers in meantime."

"Did I hear that correctly?"

The thirty nine year old salarian rounded on the source of the question, finding a human of medium height, reddish brown hair, humans would call it chestnut, musculature suggested a physical fitness level in line with a soldier, or perhaps some sort of athlete. The human wore clothes that most would consider fine, perhaps luxurious. There was a patch on his chest, a yellow shield with three black avian creatures on it.

"Are you looking to learn more about witchers?"

Mordin cocked his head at the question, "Yes, little information available publicly."

The human spoke eloquently, clearly very educated, "As it happens, I'm quite the source of knowledge on the history and culture of witchers. Perhaps I might be of some assistance to you, if you'd be willing to be of some assistance to myself, that is."

Hm, favor? No, man was wealthy, clear from clothing and accent. Perhaps he wanted sexual favors? Mordin was quite dashing if he did say so himself… not likely, however. Want information of his own? Most plausible, but of what. Both were educated, that was clear, perhaps he wished to know more about salarians? Plenty available on extranet, and far easier means to attaining first hand accounts of salarian culture than speaking with him…

"You see," the human interrupted his inner monologue by speaking again. Perhaps he would simply announce his wants? Very efficient, "I've recently acquired a level of curiosity regarding the Special Tasks Group."

Mordin looked sharply into the man's brilliant golden eyes. How…

"How did I know?" Solus might have to reevaluate his opinion of humans, for it seemed he might not have the fastest mind in this conversation, "You have the look of a soldier about you, and the curious mind of a scientist, it was an inevitable conclusion."

The salarian opened his mouth, but was once again cut off, "Do you play gwent? I myself find it a marvelous way to pass the time, and to keep one's conversations with strangers polite and in line."

The former STG agent simply chose to shut his mouth, a monumental task for him, and nodded.

 **And I think that'll do it for this round. How many of you know who the human talking to Mordin is?**

 ***I know I just kind of casually threw in that humans are using leshens to terraform planets not entirely suitable to human life. I'll be getting to this in a lot more detail later, you're going to have to suffer in ignorance for a while.**

 **As a matter of fact, I'll reveal history and lore of this world when I damn well please. If you have questions, you can ask them, and they'll be revealed in time, but just doing those stupid info dump chapters kills me a little bit inside. Maybe you guys like them, but whenever I see them in a story it just kills it for me. Mostly because its so much at once, and it doesn't mesh with the story. Call me an idiot if you want, and I'm sure some of you will, but I think that history and lore should be sprinkled in slowly, as it becomes relevant. Ya know, like when someone in the story is actively thinking about it, or if someone in the story, ignorant of the facts, asks a question, instead of being the main focus like so many people seem to do on this site.**

 **Two more things, one is a question, and the other is somewhat of a challenge. Do you guys like seeing the hunts fleshed out like this? With the setup, the detective work, the hunting down, and the fight? Or do you think that's too much to have all the time, and that I should just do certain parts while I move the story along, like do a setup one chapter, a fight the next, maybe every now and then Shepard can be carrying around a trophy he needs to turn in?**

 **I could do something like two plot chapters, and a hunt chapter, of course the plot necessitating a hunt, either for money, or information. What do you guys think?**

 **And lastly, this chapter kind of made me wish I had done a series of oneshots about various hunts all across this shared universe. So I thought to myself, why not just ask you guys to do it, if you want. The basic premise of this little 'challenge' is that a notice has been posted, a witcher answered it, and there is a hunt. You can create any sort of witcher you want, though you should note that the School of the Cat and the School of the Manticore do not exist anymore, and you can pin them against any kind of monster you want, including, as one reviewer, L'etranger0, pointed out, non Witcher beasts, like thresher maws, or klixen, or whatever sort of beasts you might desire.**

 **It doesn't have to necessarily be a hunt, either. Like a lot of good stories, the one you start with isn't always the one it ends up being. People could blame a monster, only for it to be something entirely different like pirates, slavers, or whatever you want.**

 **I don't particularly care if you guys want to do this or not, but I thought it might be a fun thing for someone who wants to write a story to do. It wouldn't take much dedication, as the full lore of the Witcher series is fairly vague so you can take some liberties, and at the most it would be one or two chapters.**

 **Thanks for reading, and drop a review!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Quick question, why does everyone think Gaunter O'Dimm is evil? I understand the devil allegory, but that's such a simple answer, and if there is one thing that is absolutely true about the quote unquote man, is that he despises simple solutions. He wicked to wicked people, honest with honest people, and kind to kind people. I think Gaunter is only as evil as the person he's dealing with.**

 **Anyway, here's the next collection of letters, assembled into words, loosely constructed into paragraphs.**

"Do you have a physical deck?" the man asked as he sat down across from Mordin, I only ask because I prefer to use one over the digital version…"

The salarian nodded in answer, producing a stack of cards with a green back, "Of course, always carry Scoia'tael deck, have cards to play any style you prefer."

They sat down on opposite seats at the terminal where Mordin would await his transport to Elysium, the space between them wasn't filled with anything, and the former STG agent would have to confess he was confused as to how they were actually going to play. Lay cards on the ground? Messy, and difficult to maintain in such a public space. Perhaps on their knees? Certainly a struggle, and would be an inconvenience to their conversation…

The human snapped his fingers, and a blue fire sprang up between them, starting at the ground and little more than a small blue candle light, it quickly rose and spread out, becoming a shimmering rectangle between the two. Four lines appeared on each side, the two in the middle of the blue flame were red, indicating the melee row, then there was a yellow line, indicating ranged, then orange, for siege units, and finally a white line, tilted up so one could set their cards down on it, without the other player seeing them.

"Impressive, very intricate, material strange," the scientist eagerly studied the construct before him, "Magically attuned hologram? No, too solid, no obvious lens nearby to cast light. Ethereal flame? No, too stable, no temperature fluctuations. Pure magical construct? Not sure, not familiar enough with arcane arts."

"I get the sense there are no mysteries in this world, for you," the chestnut haired human said with a smile, easily ignoring the stares others who had seen the man conjure the gwent table out of thin air.

Mordin shook his head, "Of course not, should be no mysteries for anyone. Everything, happens for a reason. Ignorance, merely a current predicament, look to correct at every opportunity."

Golden eyes flashed with interest at the salarian's statement before swirling his right hand, a deck of blue backed cards dropping out of a yellow portal, "I've been working on my play with the Northern Realms, let's restrict ourselves to three hero cards, three weather cards, and… as you are playing as Scoia'tael, I will restrict myself to… one… spy card."

"Fair."

Isengrim, Iorveth, Saesenthessis, three typical hero cards. Useful only for their power, but simplify the game greatly on his end. Wonder where human mage studied, likely Ban Ard, still largest school for male mages. Heard they were looking at members of other species, hadn't found any capable yet, though thought intrigued him.

Should trade out one hero card for Mysterious elf? Yes, Isengrim, Liked Saesenthessis card, not sure why. Can't narrow in on human's homeland. Mordin studied human's for a long time, particularly numerous and extreme varieties of ethnicities among humans, and elves. No tell tale sign with this mage, clearly from Northern Realms by hair, but golden eyes say Zerrikania, but no trace of Zerrikanian heritage on human's other features. No sign of Ofieri genetics, but clothing clearly a charovay.

Human shuffling deck without touching it, telekinesis? Always fascinating to watch, despite being relatively simple, and common, spell. Wonder what heroes human prefers? Playing Northern Realms, has plentiful selection to choose from. Mordin himself will use two Torrential Rains and one Clear Weather.

"Ready?"

The salarian nodded, "As always, and for both."

The smile the human answered with was slightly unsettling. Similar to a varren's smile, if one thought they were capable of smiling. It was predatory, dangerous… smug.

"This is a human colony, you are the guest on this planet, the first move, and question, is yours."

What to ask? Determine level of knowledge, start with mutations. Play small card first, draw out opponent into revealing his hand's strength.

"Would like to know, witcher mutations," Mordin asked as he placed down a Mahakaman Defender, "Source of genetic mutation. Understand it was accomplished nearly two thousand years ago, so not gene splicing."

"An interesting question, and it certainly reveals much about yourself, the nature of your thoughts. Clearly a biologist, not only in your career, but at heart."

Yarpen Zingram was laid down opposite Solus, weak hand? Too early to tell, "To answer your question, this would vary greatly from school to school. Bear use different from Wolf, who differ from Viper, who are apart from Griffin, all to maximize their student's capabilities. But the material from which the genetic alterations are derived are mutagens harvested from different monsters. I believe the School of the Bear relies heavily on green mutagens found in various relicts, to maximize their size."

Mutagens? Interesting, a concentrated dose of genetic material? Would be found in pineal gland, most likely. Ah! Subject took sample of pineal gland on Citadel, harvesting these mutagens?

"Now I believe I'm owed a question," the human was almost annoyingly well spoken, "I'd like to know about the goal of your organization. I understand your species military believes intelligence will win wars before they even begin, but what is the ultimate goal? To win all the wars… for who? For yourselves? For the Citadel? If there was a conflict brewing, that immediately aided the Salarian Union, but also decimated the Council, what would you do?"

"Personally, have always looked to big picture. What's good now, not good forever. Besides, as noted, I am a scientist, my obligation is to life. Must look at what is best for all."

"That's your personal opinion?"

"Yes, and only answer I, as a former member of the STG, can give."

"Very well, it is your turn."

Next, mutations again? No, little more to be had there without sample, will attempt to obtain one on Elysium. Weaponry? No, of little interest. Likely all fairly simple. Selection process of witchers! Perfect, would help establish cultural basis of witchers. Will continue to draw out opponent's hand. Force misplay.

"How are witchers selected?"

"Young, and through tragedy," the chestnut haired human replied somberly, "the selection process has changed greatly from when witchers first came to be, but, as I'm sure someone of your level of knowledge in all things factual, as populations rise, so do populations of children without living parents. Witchers are selected from the male half of such a population, many sorceresses and sorcerers are selected in the same fashion, but due to the military connection and government oversight, witcher schools get the first pick."

"Conscript orphans?"

"Not conscription, in the snese they are forced," the human elaborated, "These orphans, typically four to six years old, volunteer. Remember, in Alliance space, a child whose legal guardian is the state, is allowed to make decisions for themselves."

"Not concerned with ethics, merely curious of method of recruitment, already have next question, your turn."

Then the human laid down a card Mordin had only heard of. White hair, snake eyes, two swords, fifteen points, Geralt of Rivia.

"Have you ever been to Tuchanka?"

Mordin blinked twice, the card was a rarity, question was frightening. Did he know? Shouldn't, couldn't, not possible, right? What caused question? What does he suspect?

"No."

"Now sir," the golden eyes flashed dangerously, causing the scientists amphibian blood to run cold, "I have not lied to you, and I will not, I respect a man of your education and accomplishments far too much to do so, but I fear I must request the same respect and treatment. Lie to me again, and I will be forced to change my form, and treat you much less courteously."

"Yes, but, mission classified, can't speak of it."

The charming smile returned, and the human seemed to revert back to a calm and easy being, "Understandable, and you've at least truthfully answered my question, your turn I believe."

Opponent strategy hard to hone in on, but now was time to implement own. Milva found the yellow row.

The old scientist thought about changing his question as well as his strategy. Should ask how the human mage had acquired knowledge of his presence on Tuchanka, or how he knew Mordin was lying, but best to stay with preplanned tactics unless forced too.

"How do witcher Schools choose children to recruit?"

"They don't recruit, in the sense that they go and give a pitch to these children. They are asked if they wish to be witchers, to hunt monsters, live a life of hardship and servitude, not many accept, but those that do, are subjected to genetic and physical testing, to determine the proper School," the human mage hadn't looked at his cards once, seemingly picking them at random out of his hand.

"Those who show a propensity for size and strength go to the School of the Bear, who teach a style of fighting that relies on size, strength, and defense. Those with the fastest reaction times and slimmer builds go to the School of the Viper, who specialize in quick, focused combat. And the ones with the greatest propensity for the work of the mind and magic, find themselves in the School of the Griffin."

"What of the Wolf?"

"Ah, ah, ah!" the man waggled a finger, a curious gesture for the salarian, "That's an entirely different question, I gave you the other answers out of courtesy, you'll have to wait a turn."

"Of course," Mordin said, melancholy evident in his voice. Restraint on knowledge, true tragedy, but nothing for free, "Rules of engagement."

"You make me sound like some sort of vengeful beast," that charming, and disarming, and disquieting, smile was back, "But you are correct."

A Crinfrid Reaver appeared on his side of the yellow board, "What is your opinion of life, Dr. Solus?"

Rarely was Mordin ever actually terrified. Was once trapped by thresher maw, managed to keep cool then, escape with life and cover intact. Human mage, however, frightened the former STG agent, yet was capable of making him feel relaxed only a second later, then put the salarian on high alert once again.

"Never said name."

Eyebrows bounced, "Are you sure?"

"Telepathy? No, STG trained all operatives to resist magical telepathy…"

Eyebrows furrowed, "Only magical?"

The old scientist was stunned.

"Answer the question please."

"Yes, only magical."

"Not that one."

Oh, yes, the original question. What did human mean? Non-magical telepathy? Was it natural? How could one develop such an ability?

"All life important, if not specifically precious. Right to exist, should be protected for all living things."

A steady nod, then a wave of the hand, "Your turn."

Mordin's mind numb, not sure what card was set down, went in yellow row, however, so benefitted from Milva card.

"Who are you?"

"A minor player in the grand scheme," the human… whatever he was, answered with a breath, "Trying to play my part. You, however, will have a somewhat… larger role coming up. This is something I know."

The human laid down another card, Solus didn't pay attention to it, "What is your opinion," the salarian could feel his heart fall through the floor of the spaceport, "of the Genophage?"

"I…"

Genophage necessary. Krogan, needed check, were unstable, would run through galaxy on rampage, outbreeding, outmuscling, outgunning any species to try to stop them. Only option, had to be done, had to be him to do it.

"Necessary? Truly? Seems to be a stretch…"

Mordin should have been surprised, wasn't. Needed to end game, leave. Dangerous here, with human.

"Pass."

The table of blue fire disappeared, and the scientist felt his deck reappear in his pocket, "Very well. As I said, I'm but a minor player. Though my part may not be done yet, I've taken a significant step just now. As have you."

A blue backed card appeared in three fingered hand. Card, quickly turned to green, matched Scoia'tael deck. Turning card over, depicted large, golden scaled dragon, a stream of bright yellow fire emanating from its mouth. Villentretenmerth. There was a description under the picture, as there was on all cards.

"I believe you might find this card useful. Take it, as a thank you for your time."

 _He also calls himself Borch Three Jackdaws, he's not the best at names._

Jackdaws, small black birds… Not sure why, but Mordin suddenly felt, small, tiny. Like a tadpole that had found its way out of its protective home pond, and into the vast and dangerous ocean.

His large black eyes looked back up to the human, and focused in on the yellow patch, and the three small black birds on it.

…

"It should be a human, if we want them to represent the majority," Regis' understudy, Anita Goyle, said to the assembled group. The rare elf with darker skin tones, she was the only one of the Elder Races in the room, though to be fair, Admiral Hackett and Captain Anderson were the only humans.

"It should be a human because our best candidate is a human," the middle aged Admiral rebutted, "Symbolism is something we shouldn't consider, if the agent isn't effective, it will be a failure."

"What we need to do," Captain Anderson, a typically reasonable fellow in the eyes of Regis, though he was susceptible to emotional conflict and responses in accordance to such conflicts. It made him unfortunately easy to manipulate, probably why Saren had been able to get under his skin those years ago and deny their first bid to enter one of their own into the Spectres.

"… is to make sure we get a fair test for our agent."

Poor David, still bitter about what Saren Arterius had done to him those years ago. The good Captain let the incident follow him too far, influencing him and his decisions to this day, it broke his heart that such a good soul could lose some of that goodness over an incident as insignificant as that.

"What do you think, Ambassador?" Anita asked him directly, "You've been awfully quiet, you must have an opinion."

Emiel Regis Rohellec Terzieff-Godefroy, the Alliance Ambassador, an extremely accomplished man and prominent figurehead in galactic politics, who also happened to be a fifteen hundred year old higher vampire, sat with steepled fingers in front of his gray face, twinkling black eyes focusing in on something the other three couldn't see. Of course none of them were aware he was a higher vampire. In fact, the idea of higher vampires had been relegated to myth a long time ago. They, in the sense of the many and slightly educated, were aware of lesser vampires, even some were able to conceive that katakans and nekurats were able to evolve into feeling, thinking beings. Regis could remember a debate, one that started several centuries ago and still continues in a minority to this day, of granting full citizenship rights to such creatures. It fell apart after several katakans couldn't hold their bloodlust in, and slaughtered nearly a hundred humans.

It was likely for the best, the ancient vampire rather liked being insufferably superior, as opposed to understandably superior.

"I agree."

Ah, yes, the looks on their faces reminded Regis why he so enjoyed being insufferable. Nothing stoked his ego and pride more than the looks of confused mortals, angry at him for being incredibly vague and intentionally noncommittal, particularly Sparatus whenever the turian Councilor wanted something from him.

His understudy, Miss Goyle, sighed, an annoyed look marring what many would consider a beautiful face, one hand twisting the pointed end of her elven ear, a tell that the vampire had tried to break the she elf of, with limited, though progressing, success.

"Would you care to tell us who you agree with?"

"With whom."

Now they were all rubbing their temples, and Regis felt particularly accomplished at that moment.

Once again, pretty Anita asked the question, "Would you care to tell us with whom you agree?"

"Quite simply all of you," the immortal being said simply, furthering the confusion and indignance in the three mortal beings.

This time it was the stern and taciturn Admiral who voiced his displeasure, though obviously, when dealing with the Ambassador to his entire people, he kept the exact words to himself and simply chose to say, "Care to explain?"

"Obviously, it would be rude of me not to."

The good Captain buried his face in his hands in anguish, once again stoking Regis' pride, though for their sake he decided to end his insufferableness, and continue, "You are all, quite keenly correct. My student in the political and interpersonal sciences is correct in that it must be a human, as an elf, or dwarf, would likely send an incorrect impression. Already they see a divide between the races. Elves are wealthy, and hold a disproportionate number of powerful positions within our colonies. Not because the elves are involved in some sort of secret cabal that is the true power behind the Alliance, of course. It is simple gerontocracy of course, most pure blooded elves, few though they are, bring with them a wealth of experience no human could ever match. But it is difficult to see such simple logic from the outside looking in."

The vampire sat forwards over his desk, one hand reaching out and grasping a cup of water, though he fully suspected at this point, that as soon as all of this was over he'd replace the water with his increasingly famous mandrake hooch. Not because he was annoyed, but because he had a sneaking suspicion Councilor Tevos would be by later on to discuss with him what these humans and elf were discussing with him now, among other things. And it was a conversation made far easier by buttering up the Asari Councilor with her new favorite beverage.

After a small drink to wet his throat though it did not require it, for Regis was used to far longer and more eloquent speeches, he set the cup back down and clicked his pointed fingernails against the desk. Honestly, between the eyes, the fingernails, and his lack of reflection or shadow, one would have thought a vampire in his position would have been sniffed out a long time ago.

"And of course, the distinguished and honorable Admiral is correct. Our selection must be of unparalleled quality, for an ineffective Spectre would do more damage to our cause than a successful one could do to help it. We would be seen as unreliable, and a burden to the Council, setting our efforts back further than where they were when we had started. This agent, this soldier, must have the discipline characteristic of a soldier, and the skillset characteristic of an assassin, coldblooded mercenary, and krogan warlord all wrapped up into one person, while maintaining a level of independence, from us and the Council, so that they may put these skills to use in the fashion that Spectres are required to. Honestly, what we need is a witcher."

They all looked up sharply at that, though a quick wave of his ash colored hand kept them from saying anything. Still, the look on Steven Hackett's weathered face was one Regis would cherish for quite some time, the shock was simply delectable.

"Obviously we cannot choose a witcher, for many political and racial reasons, at least not this time, though in the future, I think we may find that witchers will, by far, be our best candidates for future openings."

The vampire then turned his attention to the array of tablets arranged on his desk, the names and pictures of the various candidates they were considering displayed upon them. He already had his selection picked out of course, but he made a good show of looking through them nonetheless. It was unfortunate they could only bestow this supposed honor upon one of them at this moment, for they were all, certainly, exceptional instances of person.

"And of course, our good Captain is, as we seem to find he typically is, correct. The last time this was attempted, with our very own David Anderson as the candidate in question, the Council, perhaps unknowingly, gave him an impossible task in the form of Saren Arterius' impression. Our efforts had been sabotaged from the very beginning in that particular instance, though, again, perhaps not intentionally. Saren had been one of their best and most reliable agents for a long time, and they were, in their minds, right to trust him with this task, for it is not their duty to understand any personal prejudices their agents might have, only give them their orders, and expect the relatable results."

The three seemed almost worn out by the lengthy explanations, and banal tone in which he delivered them, as though he enjoyed lording his superior intellect and verbiage over the three. Which he did, though only in small doses, and only when the mood struck him. Finally, the always agreeable David Anderson broke the trio's silence, and asked what was most assuredly on their minds.

"What is your recommendation then?"

"Is it not obvious?" the vampire asked, somewhat more bluntly than was his custom, "I've assumed by now that all of you would have reached the same, inevitable conclusion I have. Of the twelve candidates you've laid before me, ten of them are human, so that eliminates two from contention. Four of these humans are N7, by far the best soldiers we produce, particularly in regards to the requirements of the Spectre program, so there we lose another six. Then there are records to consider, deeds done, proverbial dragons slain, and how it was accomplished. Of the four remaining, only one was ever in a situation I would consider hopeless, and came through on the other side, something a Spectre will have to do on a regular basis."

His pointed nails scraped at the frame of the holographic tablet holding the picture of a young, redheaded woman, pretty, if the sensibilities of the vampire were an accurate analog for human ones. A faint dusting of freckles spread across her nose, framing powerful cheekbones. Intense green eyes reminded him of Empress Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon in the thirteenth century before her mysterious disappearance in thirteen eighty nine, though obviously the hair was the wrong color.

"Newly minted Commander Jane Shepard is the obvious choice."

Admiral Hackett keyed his display to show the Commander, looking over her record, though doubtless the experienced and wise Navy man had already memorized the profiles of all the candidates, "Her mother served in the Navy. She was a Lieutenant aboard the Cairo when it was destroyed by slavers in defense of a colony out in the Traverse. Father was Sergeant in the Marines, killed in action at Akuze when an entire battalion stirred up a nest of thresher maws."

Black eyes twinkled at the Admiral, "Does her bloodline concern you, Admiral Hackett?"

"No, but it does provide insight into the kind of person she is. Lost both of her parents in service to the Alliance, yet she chooses to serve same as them. There could be some concern that she joined out of revenge, hoping to get a chance to get back at the Batarians for killing her mother."

"Well then she's already gotten it," Captain Anderson answered for Regis, "How many do you think she killed on Elysium during the Blitz? She held the entire colony herself for nearly twenty four hours."

"Ah, but that's the issue with vendettas with unspecific enemies," the vampire countered, "It's never quite satiated, because you'll never really know."

"Well she was never given the opportunity to show her restraint, because instead of sending our own people into Torfan, we sent one of those mutants," Steven Hackett said spitefully.

"An odd choice of words, Admiral."

"An appropriate choice. That thing had no place on the battlefield, and what it did in those tunnels nearly caused a complete psychiatric break in one of our men."

"Gentlemen, this has no bearing on our current conversation," Anita pointed out as she stopped the argument brewing, or rather, the one she thought was brewing. Regis was more than capable of controlling his emotions, he would have eviscerated everyone on the Citadel and lived for the next thousand years alone and drunk on the blood of the collective beings living here.

"No, just on future ones," the Admiral grumbled. Clearly he was offended at Regis' suggestion that witchers would make for the best Spectre candidates.

"Are we all agreed that Shepard is our best candidate?" the always diplomatic she elf asked, subtly reminding all of them, though mostly just Steven, that they were all on the same side, and had, in fact, agreed on something. A mediation tactic the higher vampire had impressed upon the one hundred and fifty three year old she elf from the very moment she had arrived at the Embassy.

With the affirmative nods from all male parties, the female one continued, "Then I think we can safely say that we have our future Spectre selected, but the question still remains, how do we ensure that Shepard gets a fair shot?"

"I'll see to that," the vampire of the group said quickly, "In fact, I think I'll see to that very soon."

The comm line to the reception desk chose that moment to spring to life, just as Regis knew it would, " _I'm sorry Ambassador, I know you're in a meeting, but Councilor Tevos is here to see you?_ "

"Not a problem, my dear, we were just finishing up. The Councilor is free to enter whenever she wishes."

"How do you always know when we're going to get a visitor?"

Amusement sparkled in his coal black eyes, "I can smell them."

The she elf snorted in obvious disbelief at the thought, as well she should, Regis couldn't smell people on the other side of hermetically sealed barriers. He could feel their footsteps through the structure of the Citadel. If he was familiar with one enough, as he was with all three of the Councilors and the members of his staff in the Embassy, he could tell where each of them was, provided they weren't too far or in too much of a populated place.

"Gentlemen," he said to the two military men before looking to the diplomat in training, "Lady, we are done here for today. Admiral I believe you have some calls to make, Captain, it would be best not to mention it to Shepard yet, though you can bet your first few missions on the Normandy will be interesting to say the least. Miss Goyle, I would appreciate it if you would start on tomorrows guest list, I don't think either of us would like another ambush by the hanar delegation."

The door to his spacious office swished open, revealing the Councilor for the Asari Republics standing beyond, naturally accompanied by a pair of Asari Huntresses, as though they would be more than a nuisance to him should he decide he desired the life of the Councilor to be ended. To be fair, there was no way they could know that. The Citadel was, by in large, rather ignorant of Post Conjunction creatures in general, at least in comparison to the knowledge possessed by the average Alliance citizen. It was changing, especially as monsters became more common, but considering true higher vampires were naught but myth back on the Homeworld, it was unlikely Tevos even knew creatures such as Regis existed, despite the fact she had a healthy working relationship with one.

"Councilor! What could a slovenly creature such as I do for such a stunning creation such as yourself?"

Regis could tell, through his various, supernaturally heightened senses that his previous three conversational companions were slightly perturbed at the casual manner in which he addressed the most powerful politician within Council Space. He could also tell, that the Huntress on the left found his remarks derogatory, and she wasn't exactly a fan of the vampire, and that the Huntress on the right found it charming. Of course, there was always the uptick in beats per minute of the Councilor herself whenever Regis spoke to her.

Tevos was a schooled as anyone at keeping her outward cues to herself, her expression never changed from a slight, self assured smile, but not everyone had access to the level of information available to a higher vampire. The asari found Regis attractive, and that was something he used to his benefit on more than one occasion.

"You always manage to find a way to make yourself useful, Ambassador, I'm sure this time will be no different."

The vampire smiled in reply, hiding his fangs as he always did, and gestured to his previous conversation partners to hasten their exit. As the Admiral, Captain, and Ambassador in training made their way out, Tevos motioned to her guards, silently telling them to remain outside the sound proof door. This was to be a private conversation, good.

"I can only hope it to be so, Councilor."

"No need to be so formal now, Regis," the blue skinned asari said with a different smile than the one she wore in public, "It is just the two of us now."

He held up one sharply nailed finger in rejection of her proposal as he explained his hesitance, "Ah, but one should only ever be on formal terms with their equals, and considering the venue for this conversation, I would consider this to be related to our respective professions, and when it comes to all things political and authoritarian, it is unlikely that we will ever be equals."

One of those white markings on her face, simulating a human eyebrow, though he doubted that was its intent, arched in response to the vampire's explanation, before the asari matron spoke, "Very well then, Ambassador."

"I thank you for allowing me this small comfort, Councilor, please, sit. Make yourself comfortable. Perhaps you would wish to partake in some mandrake brandy?"

Politeness and servitude was a way into an asari's good graces, even if they'd never tell you the second part on their own. They were a naturally egotistical race, even worse than the Aen Seidhe or the Aen Elle, mostly because they weren't very forthright with their self-proclaimed superiority. They liked to hide it behind cultural freedoms and loose moralities, making it seem like they were just different. Truthfully, there was very little different between any of the cognizant species of this galaxy, and truthfully, why would there be? They all required food, water, shelter, and a mate with which to breed. Honestly, the only sapient creatures that were truly different were Regis' own people. They had none of the needs the others did, not even the need to breed, though they did so on occasion, but when they did, such as when his own parents had conceived him, it was for the experience, than out of biological necessity.

The vampire wasn't foolish enough to believe this made his kind superior. More evolved, yes, in the most basic, organic aspect. All it truly meant was that his species had left behind much of the hardship and anguish of life, and had lost their drive to accomplish as a result. Only when Regis had been made a renegade of his people had he strived to accomplish anything more than existence. Only three hundred years ago he had been elected to the Office of Mayor in Vizima, a challenge he had relished and executed respectably before being forced to resign, lest someone notice he wasn't aging in the slightest. Ever since then he had pursued a career in politics, finding the entire affair truly fascinating, and a legitimate challenge that he could find in few other fields.

"You are far too accommodating, Ambassador, and far more perceptive than any others I know, which is why I feel confident in saying that you likely know why I am here?"

Another fangless smile to disarm his comely guest, "Of course."

The asari's eyes rolled in response, a decidedly human reaction, though perhaps it was a relative norm amongst the monogendered species, "Then perhaps you'd care to tell me why I am here, so that I might organize my thoughts."

Regis continued to smile as he watched the seven hundred year old politician cross her legs underneath her long dress and take a sip of the, admittedly, watered down version of his, in some circles, infamous hooch.

"The first thing you wish to discuss is our bid to enter another human into the Spectres. I believe you will attempt to talk me out of it, though not too rigorously, as I don't believe this portion of the talk was your idea, so much as it was Councilor Sparatus'. Then, once we've come to an agreement on the fact that this bid will happen, you will wish to discuss our candidate, and the missions this person will undertake, and who will be observing them for your benefit. Finally, and on a more personal note, you plan to ask me about witchers, specifically the possibility of installing a few in the Republics, as you've found a spiking population of monsters appearing on outer colonies, and worse, they appear to be spreading further in to your territory, with seemingly no explanation for why or how."

At this point in their professional relationship, Tevos was genuinely not surprised as Regis, with more access to her body's indicators than even she had, could tell, "One day, you're going to tell me where you hid the bugs, or who you are paying off."

"What crude and unreliable measures," the vampire fired back, "I much prefer simply asking the keepers. They don't ask for much in return and are quite the source."

The Asari Councilor snorted in amusement, and she was right to be amused, in the sense that the idea one could communicate with the insectoid creatures in charge of the maintenance of the Citadel was ridiculous, but wrong in her likely assumption that that wasn't exactly what Regis was doing. Their language wasn't something a creature of mortal sensibilities could understand, but well within the realm of possibility for an immortal person such as himself.

"Since you are aware of the first subject, and its ultimate irrelevance, I suggest we simply skip it, and jump right into your candidate."

Regis simply leaned forward, holographic tablet in hand, with Shepard's profile already displayed upon it. The blue woman took the tablet and turned it so she could read the contents, "Ah, the 'Lioness of Elysium'."

The Councilor looked up, "What is a lioness?"

"It's a big cat, the species is called lion, the females are referred to as lionesses."

Tevos took his word for it as she continued to read the profile. It didn't take long for her to look back up, "Based on what's here, I approve. Though of course it is much more difficult to make this sort of decision without actually meeting her. I'm thinking of putting her with Nihlus Kryik, she'd shadow him on two missions, before reversing roles for a couple."

"You, are thinking? What are the others thinking?"

"I can hardly speak as to their thoughts, though I imagine they will fall in line," and by that, she meant they would follow the desires of the Republic whether they liked it or not.

Regis nodded in acquiescence, though he did have a follow up question, "I'm not familiar with this Nihlus, I understand I have little say in the matter, but I would like to know as much as possible, to prepare my candidate you understand."

"Of course."

Coal black eyes twinkled in amusement as Tevos tried to use a little of his own insufferableness against him, "I believe that gets us past the second speaking point. Would you prefer to lead off on the third, or shall I?"

"As you said earlier," the Councilor started, "this point is more personal than the other two, so I would appreciate it if you would allow me to take the lead on it."

Rather than poke and prod like he typically would, the ancient creature merely allowed the asari to gather her thoughts before she began.

"They haven't spread beyond one planet, but they are taking that one over, a colony of over five billion people," she informed him, "Many different kinds, some large, some small, others flying, some were even reported to… change their shape to mimic our own people."

Regis remained quiet as he listened to the representative of the Asari Republics explain the situation to him. He already had several questions on his mind, but it would be best to allow her to finish her tale, and for him to gather all the available information before asking.

"The infestation was only noticed a year ago, yet already it has spread rapidly, to the point where the population has almost completely abandoned the countryside. Smaller rural communities lie completely abandoned, overrun by these creatures."

"I'm surprised you haven't sent a fleet, dropped soldiers onto the ground, tried to take them out on your own," Regis said.

Tevos shook her head, "We dropped a team of Huntresses, they managed to survive three days, hounded by smaller creatures, necrophages I think, before something big arrived. All we heard from them were screams and then silence. We haven't sent a fleet because we don't want to raise a panic, or doubts that we aren't capable of handling the situation."

"How did this happen? How did they get there? Fiends and alghouls are more intelligent than most beasts, but they haven't exactly mastered space travel."

"You are aware of the salarian STG outpost in the Verge?"

"I'm aware that they brought samples of many different Post Conjunction creatures there, believing, foolishly, that capture, and containment, were the same thing."

"Well, the matriarch elected governess of that particular colony had convinced the council of matriarchs on Thessia that she knew better than the STG when it came to containment, and went to the overrun planet, grabbing samples herself."

The vampire shook his head, "No one ever thinks to seek professional help until it is too late. If she had hired a witcher, this matriarch would have at least had a fighting chance, of course, a witcher would likely try and talk her out of live specimens."

Tevos smiled grimly, "Well no one need be concerned about any future mistakes from her. A chort, I believe it is called, one of the big, three eyed ones with horns instead of antlers, ran through the capital city's spaceport like a wrecking ball, before we were able to take it down, by collapsing the building on it, it was able to eat its fill of governess."

"What exactly is it you wish from me here? We have one thousand one hundred and twelve witchers right now, hardly enough to land as an army to exterminate the entire infestation…"

"Any help you can give would be appreciated, and I'm well aware it is an impossible task, but your species lived alongside these monsters for two thousand years. You know how to do it, and hopefully you can help us do the same, as it is clear this is a problem that won't go away."

The vampire's mind was whirling with possibilities, though he thought he might have a solution already at hand, "What we should do is consult a witcher, he may best know how to go about accomplishing any goals you may have for the colony. And if I may be so bold, I think I already know the one we should speak to."

"Who?"

"He's an older witcher, nearing his third century, Garth, of the School of the Wolf. I've met him myself a few times in my more… adventurous youth, and from what I've been told he is widely respected amongst all Schools, and considered the informal leader of all witchers. If anyone knows how to help you, it would be him."

…

Saren stood on the bridge of Sovereign, staring out into the vast emptiness of space. Three years ago he had found this ship, and had begun accumulating power, the very power he had wished for. It did not fill him with the feeling of glee and sense of hope he had imagined it would.

A pain shot up his arm, forcing the turian to grab at the limb, only to be reminded that there was no flesh there anymore, and therefore couldn't hurt. Blood had been the seal in which he had begun his quest for the power to thwart humanity and cast out magic. Saren still remembered when he had paid it, taking an unlucky shot from one of the crazed batarians that had been crawling all over this behemoth of a ship. The bleeding had caused him to pass out, but when he awoke, there was no more bleeding, and a sense of purpose burning in his mind that hadn't been there for years.

Everything he had wanted was coming to being, thanks to the loss of that arm. He now had his army to destroy humanity. A geth fleet floated in the void next to the goliath Sovereign. Frigates with speed and maneuverability to run circles around the most advanced Salarian fast response warships. Cruisers with the punch to put a Hierarchy vessel to shame. Dreadnoughts, ships so large they rivaled the asari's Destiny Ascension in sheer size.

Then there was Sovereign itself, a vessel so large, so powerful, so advanced, the Spectre couldn't compare it to any vessel in history. It's mere presence was awe inspiring, terror inducing, mind warping, and will breaking. Sometimes, when Arterius was just waking from sleep, he could swear he could hear the vessel speaking to him, whispering from the shadows of his makeshift quarters.

The geth revered this thing as a god itself, perhaps they weren't so wrong to do so. It had already broken an asari matriarch's will to suit his own, and subsequently all of her followers. The vessel had conjured up the advanced genetic science to clone krogan, and grow them to full size in months, a feat no scientifically capable group had been able to accomplish before. Granted, not many were trying.

Still, even this vessel didn't have the power to cast out magic. That was why Saren had taken to studying the arts himself, an urge that had struck him more and more as of late. Deep into nights, the turian spent his time pouring over datapads containing arcane knowledge, and indeed had taken to trying to find the originals in most cases. Using his new asari commandoes to steal ancient tomes and scrolls. By understanding magic, by using it, he would finally be able to rid the galaxy of its taint.

In the meantime, it was a source of more power, more abilities. He was not a Source, he could not tap into magic directly, and there was no way he could learn to harness magical energy like many human mages had. Instead, Saren had learned the black arts, and been rewarded with abilities to make him more dangerous than any sorcerer or sorceress the Alliance could offer in opposition. Just yesterday he had completely drained the life out of an asari commando, adding her essence to his own, and using it to make him stronger while her body had literally turned to ash.

There was a shifting, shuffling motion to the side, drawing Saren's gaze. A hulking figure moved closer, a dark and tattered cloth draped over its form, hiding the grotesque caricature of a turian beneath it.

"Desolas, my brother," the Spectre called to the shambling creature, "Are you ready to begin? To have our revenge?"

His brother's twisted and agonized features screamed out in pain from the sickening façade of a turian head, the stitches surrounding the face, and holding the features to the head, bleeding a blue-grey liquid that only a fool would mistake for blood. Slowly, the demon in the ineffectual guise of the living turian's dead brother nodded its disgusting cranium, head frills flopping loosely beneath the hood.

Saren smiled, "Excellent… I know our first objective. There's a beacon on Eden Prime, a human colony. We can use it to learn more, more about what they did to the Citadel. Then we'll be able to do it. To get rid of them… harvest them…"

Harvest? What was there to harvest? Why… curious… Yes. They must be harvested, studied. Nazara needed to know what made them so unique. Who was Nazara?

An unsettling cold settled into his stomach, though Saren had already forgotten why it had settled there in the first place. It didn't matter, he had a goal, an objective, and it was time to begin.

His head snapped to settle his bright red eyes on a nearby geth platform, "Gather all the information your units have gathered on Eden Prime and bring them to me. I want to know Alliance patrol routes, garrison strength, strategic locations, nearby systems we can stage from."

The unit started moving, but much to slowly for the ever improving turian, "GO!"

The Spectre's talons glowed a deep red as he clenched them into a fist, and flung the unfortunate platform from the area he had loosely assembled into a bridge aboard the vast behemoth.

Now was not the time for patience, now was the time for action…

 **No Witcher Shepard in this one, figured he could use a break. This chapter is a little shorter than my standard, about a thousand words shorter, but it's a setup for future storylines, though I'm guessing you've already seen what I'm up to. As one reviewer pointed out in his lengthy and somewhat condescending (though I'm not complaining, getting actual constructive criticism is rare on this site) reviews, I am not terribly subtle.**

 **If anyone is confused with the timing of this, the first scene with Saren and O'Dimm takes place three years before the rest of the events in that chapter. I didn't think that one through very well, and it might seem a little confusing.**

 **What do you guys think of Occultist Saren? Kind of in the same vein as Olgierd a little, though he's doing what he's doing for different reasons, he's suffering just the same for it.**

 **Also, let me know what you think of the story lines I'm setting up. The Witcher universe is so much more than witchers, though they are by far the coolest part, and I'm trying to hit as many as I can, though some topics will just have to wait.**

 **And before anyone can ask me what the hell is up with an entire asari colony getting taken over by monsters and no one seemingly doing anything, remember that this is the same universe where entire colonies would literally disappear, and no one would do anything. Granted they were smaller human colonies of a few thousand, maybe a hundred thousand, but when you compare human populations to the estimated asari populations, a colony of only a few billion probably is one of their smallest colonies, and therefore not particularly important, especially considering how isolationist some parts of asari space are.**

 **Sorry this one took a little longer than the others, I've been working six twelve hour days a week for a while, and it finally caught up to me, and I've been fairly exhausted all week, so sorry if the chapter isn't up to snuff. Good news is that I have vacation next week, so hopefully I can get a pair of quality chapters out before next Friday, though who knows with me.**

 **Thanks for reading guys, and please, drop a review, just for me. Please?**


	5. Chapter 5

**Yeah, yeah, it's late. Sue me. I had to cut down a bunch of trees around the house, replace the radio in my truck, do other white trash Iowa things. I'm busy!**

 **Enjoy, or don't! Either way let me know about it.**

Jane moved through the newest addition to the Alliance Navy, a stealth frigate by the name of the Normandy. The vessel itself was of hybrid design, not of vessel classes, but of species, with both human and turian engineers putting the design of this particular vessel together. It showed in the elongated bridge at the top of the ship and aerodynamic wings on both sides of the craft, both typical Hierarchy craft design. Added to that was the most advanced tech in the Alliance, one field that the humans were beginning to outpace the other races. For whatever reason, human technology seemed to be advancing faster than the other species'. Some of that could be attributed to the fact that they had some catch up to do when they had joined the Citadel, but they had long passed by the point of catch up.

Perhaps it was the entire wings of Ban Ard and Aretuza dedicated to the study of technology, allowing students with the ability to manipulate nature the ability to experiment on the most advanced of theoretical physics. Both private schools had been pumping out new tech, ranging from the mundane, life improving technologies, to the new gene therapies available for military and civilian use, though nothing as complete those put on witchers of course. New weapons and shielding was constantly being pushed through as well, Shepard swore she had gone through four standard assault rifles in the four years she had actually been a member of the Alliance Military.

Or maybe it was the same thing that allowed a shorter lived, physically inferior species to overrun an entire planet filled with long lived elves, sturdy dwarves, and terrifying monsters. Maybe it was an unmatched ambition and uninhibited lust for more. More what? More everything. There was no shortage of mistrust and animosity for humans in Citadel space, and perhaps their all consuming hunger was the reason. In just thirty years they had already established themselves as one of the strongest militaries in the galaxy, and that was with one and a half percent of their population actually enlisted.

Regardless of the reason, Alliance military hardware was among some of the best in the galaxy, outside of Asari space, but they weren't exactly willing to share, and this boat had all of it packed in. The guns weren't anything terribly impressive, but full out warfare wasn't this ship's ultimate purpose, instead, the cloaking technology was the pinnacle of scientific achievement with this vehicle, starting with the ability to shunt all of the vessel's waste heat not into heat sinks, but literally outside the realm of time and space, to the void between worlds. Jane wasn't entirely sure how it worked, but it was fortunate that Chief Adams was a graduate of Ban Ard and could keep the vital piece of equipment working.

The knowledgeable, and skilled engineer also knew plenty about the newest and most expensive piece of this ship, the gargantuan Tantalus Drive Core. This was something Shepard was significantly more familiar with, though she was still nothing more than a novice engineer, every member of the Navy had more than a basic understanding of how a drive core worked, and each crew member was expected to become more familiar with the particular device used on the ship which they served. And as XO, her expectations were doubled.

But engineering was behind her as she stepped off the lift in the center of the ship and walked out into the main crew deck, where the small detachment of marines were grabbing a quick meal before they hit Eden Prime. Though it was unlikely they would be needed, all ten of them would gear up all the same, Jane had seen to it herself, and led by example, already dressed in her N7 combat armor, Avenger assault rifle fixed on her back, Katana shotgun folded up on the small of her back, and the gigantic 'Hexer' in an old fashioned strapped holster on her thigh.

The soldiers there greeted her, and she gave them a nod in return, though her destination was the floor above as she quickly ascended the stairs, passing by the next highest officer behind her and their navigator, a man named Pressley, and starting down the long narrow bridge towards the cockpit, where another of her marines, the pilot, and the mystery were waiting, though perhaps not for her.

"Coming up on the relay," the pilot, a human man by the name of Jeff, though he, for whatever reason that didn't really interest Jane, preferred to be called Joker.

True to Joker's words, a colossal tuning fork was slowly growing in the forward viewport, a great pair of gyrating rings spinning faster and faster over a pulsing blue core.

"Initiating jump in three… two… one…"

A lance of pure white energy reached out, grabbing hold of the diminutive ship, and flinging it lightyears across the galaxy. The N7 didn't even feel a thing as the ship dropped out of what could only be described as massless space, though the technical name for it was probably more descriptive. Honestly it was always a little nauseating every time they came out of a relay, when her eyes could see that they had decelerated, but her body felt nothing. Nothing nearly as bad as it used to be, when she had first gone along with her mother and her ten year old self had proceeded to vomit all over her mother's uniform.

"All systems green, drift recorded of fifteen hundred kilometers."

"Fifteen hundred is good, your captain will be pleased," the mystery man, a turian Spectre with dark plates and white face paint told the scrawny human pilot, right before he left, without a word to either her or her second, Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko.

"What an ass," Joker sneered as he glared down at his controls, "I hate that guy."

"Nihlus complimented you, so you hate him?" Shepard's Lieutenant asked the pilot, "Must explain why you have so many friends, Jeff."

"It's Joker, and it wasn't a compliment," the orange haired man rebutted as Kaidan looked to Shepard, mouthing, 'Notice he didn't bring up the friends part?'

"Remember to zip up your fly after using the john? That's good," Joker continued, totally oblivious to the silently snickering pair right behind him, "I just flung us halfway across the galaxy and hit a target the size of a pinhead, so I think that's pretty damned incredible. Besides, Spectres are trouble, almost as much as witchers."

"What makes you say that?" Jane asked, speaking for the first time in their little engagement.

"You don't bring someone like that along unless you're expecting something serious."

"That doesn't mean they're trouble," the redheaded N7 pointed out, "That means they're good a taking care of trouble."

"Oh yeah," the pilot mocked, "Just like witchers then, because _they've_ been doing _such_ a good job, it's not like monsters haven't been spreading like rats across the galaxy."

This time it was Kaidan who answered, "There's only a thousand of them, the galaxy is huge, and somehow, people haven't gotten over the fact that witchers don't answer to anyone. They take military contracts, but they're totally self-funded, they don't need to answer to anyone."

"Yeah, why do you think they make such good money? Lots of monsters is good for business, wouldn't be surprised if they were the ones spreading monsters," Joker retorted.

"Witchers don't like good business. That's their life on the line. You think they like being outcasts among people like you? Or that they enjoy having to go toe to toe with creatures that should only appear in your worst nightmares? Have you ever even met one, Joker?"

"Have you?" Shepard asked, genuinely curious. Kaidan was a relatively green soldier, though he had tested exceptionally high straight out of the military sub wing of Ban Ard, but he was clearly not like most raw recruits Jane had to deal with.

Alenko nodded, "They brought a Griffin and a Wolf in to teach us some different things. Griffins are notoriously good spell casters, and he taught us a few witcher signs and how to use different variations to get different results. To be honest, those are some of the most useful ones I know. I'm no Vilgefortz after all, I can't even portal around, but those signs of theirs are simple, and useful."

"What was the Wolf there for?"

"Monsters, how best to fight them, how to identify them, how to tell a dangerous one from one that doesn't pose a threat."

" _Commander Shepard, report to the briefing room,_ " Captain David Anderson's voice sounded over the comm, cutting their conversation short, " _Joker, let me know when we're an hour out from Eden Prime._ "

"Aye sir, Commander's on her way, and just to warn you, I think Nihlus is headed your way."

" _He's already here, Flight Lieutenant._ "

Jane rolled green eyes as she jerked her head to Alenko, silently telling him to go get the marines geared up while she dealt with the Captain and the Spectre.

"Great, he sounds angry with me," Joker mumbled, just loud enough for the pair of soldiers to hear, to which Alenko responded.

"Can't imagine why."

The redheaded N7 moved back down the long narrow bridge, then nodded to Pressley, Dr. Chakwas, and watched as Kaidan grabbed a young, baby faced marine by the name of Jenkins and pulled him downstairs before pulling up and pausing at the door to the briefing room.

Taking a deep breath, Jane told herself under said breath, "This will be interesting."

…

"Well this is interesting," Shepard of Undvik whispered under his breath. The witcher rolled over the defunct… mech, robot, android… he wasn't entire sure what it was, but it had literally dropped out of the sky in the middle of the forest where he was supposed to be hunting a leshen.

The alien forest was quiet, far too quiet for the Wolf's liking. Leshens didn't drive off forest life, it enhanced it. Typically you could tell a leshen was near when the sounds of the animals drove to tremendous crescendos, far above the natural din of a wildlife population. That meant that the creature wasn't nearby, so it wasn't the forest spirit that was pulling robots out of the sky. So what was? Where did this thing come from?

That was when the sound of hundreds of sonic booms filtered through the dense foliage at the tree tops.

"That can't be good."

Viper eyes focused on the dark, twisting branches that marked the ominous border of the leshen's territory. Shepard could feel the darkness almost watching him. There were no indicators pointing to the forest spirit being near, but that's what made the demi-god creatures so dangerous, they were more than capable of surpassing your expectations. Looking into the almost primeval woods, despite how young they really were, Wolf realized that this creature had already exceeded his.

The witcher was reaching for Grey Wolf slung across his back when the forest moved and something came flying out at him. Silver flashed and bisected the missile, only Shepard to realize it wasn't an attack, it was another mech, looking much the same as the second one, only cut in half.

Soft footfalls, too quiet for anyone but himself to hear, padded over to the upper portion of the mech, looking at the hooded head and singular lens one could presume was its eye. The torso shape was vaguely familiar as a male humanoid, with a narrow waist and wide shoulders, thick, white armor plating running along the back, shoulders, and chest, while leaving the arms and abdominal area exposed. Arms ended in three digits, and the entire structure was significantly more fluid than your standard mechanical battle platform, with some sort of elastic material that seemed to be responsible for the motor functions as opposed to hydraulic pistons and motors.

The dark haired witcher looked back to the bottom half, finding much of the same, though there was little to no armor plating on the lower limbs. The leg structure itself was strange, however, not at all in the same fashion at all that most species would build their mechs. The shins were bent backwards, like a turians, or…

"Geth, gotta be…"

Viper eyes looked back up to the suffocating canopy, looking to the small patches of blue sky exposed by absent foliage, and found multiple vapor trails, remnants of atmospheric entry by shuttle craft, hundreds of them.

His gaze swung back to the darkened forest, finding that the twisted branches and primal woods were no longer alone. Fifteen feet of hardened, twisted, malevolent wood roughly formed the grotesque caricature of a human body, draped in rough, plant fiber spun cloth and animal furs, held onto its long, lanky frame by a belt lined with human skulls. At the top, there was a bleached animal skull, much larger than any native to the planet, but reminiscent of herbivores that made the forest their homes, with large, curved, vicious horns coming out of the bleached bone.

It was the leshen, the communal spirit of nature, formed by sorcerers and sorceresses when the planet had first been tagged for colonization to craft an atmosphere that was much more conducive to life from the Homeworld while keeping its unique biosphere intact. Here, in these forests, the ones spread out all over the planet, even beyond their borders, into humanities cities that dotted the planet, the leshen was king, emperor, absolute supreme ruler. It was, without a doubt, the most powerful creature on the planet, and he had come to kill it.

That was when Shepard noticed something in its hand, clutched in monstrous, grotesque hardwood claws. It was another geth platform, this one significantly larger, and red, white liquid dripping out of severed hydraulic lines and sparks coming off of torn wiring.

A subtle shift of its shoulder, and the monstrous human analogue threw the large robot at the witcher's feet with ease. Sharpened hearing picked up the distant sound of gunfire starting, as well as the sudden shift in the wind, causing the leaves to rustle, branches to rasp against one another, and trunks to groan. The leshen was speaking, in its own, primeval language, one that was understood by so very, very few, but translation wasn't needed here, the message was obvious.

Wolf turned and ran back towards the city, his feet blurring as they rushed over the undergrowth. The sounds of gunfire was growing, explosions joining the mix, his sensitive ears, capable of practically hearing another person's hair growing, was even able to pick up the first of what were bound to be many screaming innocents.

…

Ashley Williams ducked under a spray of pulse rifle fire, the strange blue projectiles acting more like directed energy weapons than standard mass accelerator rounds. Her normally polished white armor was stained with dirt, maybe the reason the geth didn't see her as she righted herself and sprayed one unfortunate robot that had strayed too far from cover with rifle fire.

The Avenger in her hands lacked real stopping power but it was reasonably accurate, and made up for its lack of power with a high fire rate that could rip through barriers. It was just fortunate for the marines that most of the geth didn't come heavily armored, instead preferring to rely on their shields to protect them and their superior numbers to prevent them from coordinating fire.

The mechanical aggressor fell to the ground as its barriers burst and steel shavings split dark gray armor and shredded delicate electronics.

"Dammit Williams, get up, we've got more of those red robots coming in from the east," her Lieutenant barked from his spot at the top of the prefab shelter that surrounded the Prothean dig site, sniper rifle in hand, "Take your squad and cut them off before they can get in position!"

The grandchild of the infamous General Williams quickly looked for her squad, of which there were only two left alive, and quickly called them to her, already moving behind concrete barricades to get started east.

Part of the marine was still shellshocked. This shouldn't be happening, nothing bad ever happened on Eden Prime, except for the occasional idiot who thought they could walk into the wilderness and commune with the leshen. This was supposed to be the most boring six months of her life, filled with PT and target practice. Now she was involved in a desperate attempt to hold off thousands of mechanical monstrosities as they dropped from the sky, and the only reason there weren't tens of thousands was because their first wave had tried flying in low over the forests, which had been a tremendous mistake on their part. Now they had to come in at a higher angle, and the cities anti-aircraft guns had managed to take more than a few down.

That was another thing that was off about this whole situation, none of the geth had gone for the city, they had focused exclusively on the dig site, like they knew about the beacon the archaeologists had dug up. But no one should know, Ashley had been guarding the damn thing for a week, and only found out it existed an hour ago when her Lieutenant had told her why it was so important they hold the dig site.

All three marines barreled down the narrow causeway formed by the digging, piles of gravel forcing chokepoints while also preventing anyone, marines or geth, from attaining high ground atop them. The trio found that they were ahead of the advance of the rocket geth troopers.

"Corporal, move to the far end, the private and I will stay on this side, when they come through, we'll force their back to you, drop a grenade on them to drop their barriers and then we'll take them down together."

The corporal, an Ofieri woman, nodded her head, running to the far end of the large excavation, while the Ashley and the private, a Nilfgaardian man, ducked behind the bucket of a large yellow excavator, the thick steel of the shovel providing more than adequate protection from almost any small arms fire.

"Gunny," the private asked, wiping his face as stress and exertion had caused him, and Williams for that matter, to sweat profusely, "Are we going to die?"

An explosion rocked the ground, a black cloud rising from further in the dig site, "Probably."

Red troopers poured in from opening in the clearing to the right, both Williams and the other marine opening up with their rifles, forcing the bright red platforms into finding cover amongst the various excavation equipment.

As the geth moved along their cover, Ashley saw the corporal peeking out from behind cover, aiming her rifle, "Too soon, don't do it…"

The Ofieri woman opened fire, catching one geth exposed, but instead of following up with a grenade as she had been ordered, continued to fire at the rest of the geth, exposing herself in turn. She paid for her miscalculation with her life as a rocket slammed into the boulder she had been using for cover, shattering the rock and slamming the marine's body into the side of the excavation, crushing the life out of her and riddling her poor body with shrapnel.

"Fuck!"

The gunnery sergeant fired two short bursts into the geth that had stepped into the clear to fire that rocket. The first trio of steel shavings bounced off blue kinetic barriers, but the second shredded through ceramic armor and hardened, if vulnerable, electronics.

She was forced to pull back, however, as the other two rocket troopers rained explosive missiles down on the pair of marines. The ballistic weapons did not have the same effect on the steel bucket as they did on the granite boulder, and as a result neither soldier was injured in their retreat back towards the makeshift canyon they had entered through. Though Williams realized they couldn't retreat back through the gravel alleyway, however, as nothing would be more devastating to their defensive positions than a pair of RPG's raining hell down on them.

"We have to hold here," Ashley told the private, "I'm going to make a run for the other side, when they step out to fire at me, take them down. Quickly please."

The private just nodded, and the gunnery sergeant was off, running for the other end of the cleared out dig. All according to plan as both red geth stepped out of cover, though perhaps it wasn't according to Ashley's plan, because instead of looking to strike down the sprinting marine, they chose to focus on the one preparing to shoot them.

Williams didn't even get turned around in time to see the private vanish in a red, pasty explosion. Both geth immediately turned on her, forcing the marine to fire her weapon wildly in hopes of driving them to cover. Fortune smiled on her for once that day, as enough bullets connected to knock one platform out of commission and drive the other one back.

She slid into cover, holding her overheated rifle loosely as the daughter of a failed line of military men and women had lived up to her legacy, and failed again. Her entire squad wiped out, and it hadn't even taken two hours.

A rocket sailed past her cover, impacting the side of the dig, and drawing the marine out of her thoughts and back to the matter at hand. The singular geth platform might not be a danger to the main line of defense anymore, it was most certainly a danger to her.

Williams leaned out of cover, exposing as little of herself as possible as she looked for the red armor of the rocket trooper and finding it, in full retreat. The young woman was confused, until it stopped next to the causeway through which it had entered, and stepped aside to allow a towering, imposing, dark grey, giant of a geth. There was no plasma rifle in this thing's hands, instead it held what could only be described, as a chaingun.

A roar cut out across the excavation site as the weapon spun up, spewing blue death out at insane rates, sending dirt, gravel, chunks of rock, and pieces of machinery flying as Ashley dove behind a heavy excavator's belt tracks. The new geth took no time at all in completely tearing apart the excavator's cab, reducing the thick steel shell to scrap and the heavy, reinforced glass to shards, and generally simply eviscerating and annihilating the heavy equipment. Still, as powerful as the weapon was, the tracks were almost entirely solid steel, cast under heavy pressures and intense heat, it was the only thing that saved the marine's life.

The roar died, and blue rounds ceased their endless tirade. Williams crawled to the far end of the machine before peeking out, hoping the thing would already be moving on. She was met with luck as the goliath and the red rocket trooper with it had already turned away. Apparently geth didn't bother confirming kills.

The marine grabbed a fragmentation grenade from her belt, hit the detonator, and threw it at the back of the larger platform where it detonated, completely eviscerating the smaller, red trooper, but failing to do more than stagger the larger, heavily armed geth as it turned, quicker than something its size should be able to do, and brought its gargantuan weapon to bear.

A single shot rang out, causing Ashley to shut her eyes in anticipation of her impending doom, only to open them moments later as no other shots were heard.

The huge robot was standing there, holding a sparking, sizzling weapon, a hole punched clean through it by what had to be an absurdly large round in comparison to the small shavings standard mass accelerators used.

A second shot rang out, sparking off the towering destroyer's shoulder armor. A third shot deflected off the smooth hood shaped armor protecting its head, and a fourth ricocheted off the flashlight eye. Clearly the platform was designed to be resistant against small arms fire, regardless of their insane slug size.

Tired of standing there and soaking up bullets, the geth reached down and grabbed a large chunk of its former comrade, flinging the scrapped metal at the marine, forcing Ashley to roll to the side, lest she be crushed under the heavy missile.

Shots continued to ring out, striking the large platform from somewhere behind the marine, outside of the excavation, and having little to no effect on the behemoth machine. The geth stormed towards the young woman, undeterred by the continued ping of rounds striking its thick armor designed to withstand artillery strikes, and reached a three fingered hand out towards her, intent using its own hands to crush the life from her.

Williams had no intention of allowing it to do so, however, as she opened up with her Avenger, her shots finding more purchase on the lightly armored hand than her hidden guardian was with the large mechanical monstrosities armor, the sliver sized rounds ripping white hydraulic fluid out of the elastic synthetic musculature of the platform's hand and even cutting one of the three fingers off.

That was when the giant mechanical creature switched tactics, and lunged with its undamaged fist…

And struck an orange barrier that covered both the marine, and her sudden ally. The orange bubble burst, staggering the giant geth, and Ashley's unknown guardian angel surged forward, moving with a fluidity and grace that didn't belong to any human or alien the young woman had ever seen before, and plunged a long, silver grey sword into the creases between thick armor plates.

Sparks and white fluid sprayed from the 'wound', but ultimately the strike had little effect, until the tall, dark haired man pried the armor apart, and stuffed the barrel of an enormous pistol into the gap and opened fire, brass shells flying from the slide of the weapon as what she could only assume were enormous slugs ripped through the vulnerable inner mechanics.

The destroyer reached around with its undamaged hand and pulled the bladesman off of it, tossing the broad human to the side as it stood straighter, though with significant difficulty, and charged after the downed man. Not one to abandon someone, even if he had literally appeared out of nowhere, Williams hit the detonator on another grenade, and gave chase to the robot, her target the damaged crease between plates that had been pulled on by her guardian angel.

Ash slammed the small explosive into the crevice, and was immediately grabbed by the giant mechanical creature. The damaged hand couldn't crush her, but it was more than enough to keep her from escaping as the fragmentation grenade loudly counted down until it detonated. Fortunately, her savior proved to be very aware of the situation, and gave his assistance in a fashion that was definitely not preferred.

His hand twisted and the marine felt the air get blasted out of her lungs as a wave of invisible energy struck her and flung her far from the doomed geth platform.

The towering hulk of armor, hydraulics, and electronics, exploded, showering the area in its small pieces and debris, most simply deflecting off of her barriers as she quickly found her feet and looked towards the man who had saved her, hoping he was still alive, finding him completely unharmed.

That was when the man surprised her again, as he stood to his full height and locked a pair of viper eyes on her. The man wasn't a man at all.

"Thanks," even its voice sounded inhuman. Raspy, unnaturally quiet, he sounded more like a wraith than a human being he so grossly imitated, "The grenade was quick thinking."

Williams, wisely, kept her mouth shut in case she found herself incapable of keeping her thoughts inside her head. Instead she simply chose to expose the heat sink on her Avenger, letting the rifle cool off.

The inhuman being decided to do something similar, as he ejected a large magazine from a massive rifle slung across his chest and slammed a new, full one in, before doing the same thing with his large pistol that he had used to hammer the insides of the huge geth.

It was then that his yellow eyes raked over her waist, something he saw there causing him to reach for a second hand cannon, offering handle first.

"Need a sidearm?"

She did, but she also didn't want to accept anything from a witcher, particularly since everyone knew they didn't do anything for free. Eternal Fire he was probably only here because some rich citizen had paid him to come out here and protect the beacon!

His snake eyes rolled and a sneer graced his face, "It's free of charge… just like everything I'm doing here."

"Witcher's don't do anything for free," Ash couldn't help herself this time, and the un-man simply huffed once and replied.

"That's why we don't work for dwarves, ya know, cause they're greedy little magpies."

The marine's face went bright red as she aggressively ripped the proffered pistol out of the unnatural person's hands and slapped it against the magnetic plate on her thigh. There was no emotion displayed on that unnatural face, but Ashley could feel the unbearable smugness roiling off of him as the witcher turned back towards the entrance through witch the geth had been coming from.

"We've got more coming, twelve smaller platforms, two big ones…"

The witcher was cut off by a massive, overbearing, painful noise that filled the world the two of them occupied. Oddly enough, despite the inhuman being's ability to recover from most things that would kill a human, Ashley was the one who was able to recover first, and look to the source, only to be stunned again, this time by the sheer sight that met her.

Williams wasn't new to ship design, having been involved in the Alliance Navy since birth, with her father having been a marine, and had seen ships from every major military power in the galaxy up close before. Even today, she had seen true geth vessels, but what was descending from the sky, was unlike any of them.

For one, it was by far the largest ship she had ever seen, reaching into the clouds despite already having nearly descended all the way to the ground. The shape was all wrong as well, it didn't match any design, or conventional designs in any fashion. It looked like a giant squid, with no room for a spinal cannon, or any sense of where the bridge might be, or any visible thrusters, like literally, a giant, metallic cephalopod that could swim through space in the same fashion its smaller organic cousins could swim through the water.

A red cloud clung to the superstructure of the vessel, lashing out with large bolts of red lightning to the surrounding structure, annihilating entire sections of the towers jutting out of the spaceport. That was when the marine noticed the giant red eye in the center of the ship, glowing brighter as the lightning increased in intensity.

The eye lashed out, a great red beam lancing out and striking the dig site. The last thing Ashley saw was a great wall of dirt, rock, and sand lifting high in the sky, looming over her, casting the pair in shadow as the tidal wave of earth blotted out of the sky.

…

Pain was her world, compounded by sharp cracks and powerful booms, shaking the black world around her. A large hand grabbed her by the waist and pushed her body, making Ashley realize that she was lying in some sort of sled. There was a clatter as something was laid where she had been just a few moments ago, the smell of gunpowder and ozone wafting off the object.

Voices could be heard on the periphery, though they seemed strange. One was quiet and deep, the other seemed to be coming through some sort of radio, or electronic filter.

"Please tell me you got the transmission sent!"

"Just like you told me to!"

"Good, and the ship?"

"The geth ignored it!"

Finally, Gunnery Sergeant Williams opened her eyes, and found herself jolted awake by the sight.

A black armored geth platform rushed up, stopping approximately ten meters away, and pointed its pulse rifle at something behind the marine. It was stopped before it could fire, however, as three shots punched right through its body, the gunshots accompanying the rounds sounding more like a big game hunting rifle than a combat assault rifle.

As the geth fell down, another took its place, aiming at the same spot, however this one didn't die right away like the second one. Ashley took note of the continuing crack of the rifle, and how none of the shots were in the direction of the new trooper that was currently raising its rifle and concluded that whoever it was aiming at was not aware of its presence.

The marine's hand went to her waist and found the grip of a sidearm. Instinct snapped the hand cannon in front of her and years of training had her pulling the trigger four times, though from the results, she pulled it three times too many, as the colossal slugs, too slow to be picked up by the finely tuned kinetic barriers, punched right through the thick armor and ripped out vital electronics.

Williams sat up, finding herself in a sled, a trail leading away from the back, indicating that she had been drug around for quite some distance. Next to her, in the sled, were several rifles, shotguns, sidearms, RPG's, and grenades.

"You're awake!" a filtered, accented voice cried, preceding the sharp staccato of a submachinegun.

The marine turned to find a slim quarian girl kneeling behind a tree, why were they in the woods? The submachinegun that had been firing was hers as she suppressed several geth troopers that were following them into the forest. Or at least that is what the young woman was assuming she was trying to do.

"Bosh'tet, this thing's sights are junk!"

That was when the witcher appeared in Ashley's field of vision, rifle slung across his chest and wielding his one remaining sidearm, quickly and efficiently dispatching any geth that dared peer out from behind the botanical cover.

"The sights are fine," the dark haired mutant barked, the only way he was able to raise his voice beyond a raspy growl, "It's the person using it that can't hack it!"

The quarian girl yelled something back, but Ashley didn't hear it as something else took her attention, prompting the marine to bring the sight to the other's attention as well, "Destroyer!"

"Fuck! Stay down Kara, you too marine!" the mutant ripped his sword from his back and prepared a grenade, but was deterred from doing anything more as a storm of pulse rounds ripped through the normally peaceful woods and forced him to dash from tree to tree.

The giant geth moved with a purpose as it continued to pour blue rounds out of its massive weapon, chasing down the group likely intent on physically crushing the unlikely trio.

Williams raised her new hand cannon in hopes of at least dividing its attention. As disgusting as she found witchers, even she had to admit he was likely the best bet on her survival for the next few hours. Unfortunately, the hand cannon, as powerful as it was, wasn't enough to get the job done, as heavy rounds were pancaked by the thick armor plating, and the destroyer didn't even look twice.

Glancing down to her right, Williams found a potential solution to the goliath geth's lack of interest, though her battered and bruised frame had difficulty lifting the RPG to her shoulder. The next obstacle, was getting a damned shot lined up.

"Get it to hold still, dammit!"

Apparently she still hadn't regained the ability to yell, though fortunately she was close enough for the quarian to hear, "Shepard! Can you make it sit still!

"What?!"

"Make it stay in one spot!"

One geth had snuck up on the witcher who had been on the run, trying to evade the storm of pulse rounds, but that was really more unfortunate for the robot than the witcher, as that flashy, silver grey sword cut right through its unarmored abdomen and severed major hydraulic and power lines. The mutant used his new 'meat' shield to his advantage as he tossed it to one side of the thick tree trunk he was using as cover, watching the storm of bullets riddle the corpse, and stepped out on the other.

Ashley wasn't sure what his fingers were doing, and was quite sure she'd never be able to replicate the motion herself, but the effect was undeniable, as a purple haze washed over the destroyer, its motions slowing to sluggish speeds. Almost as though it were moving through water, rather than air, and gave Williams the perfect opening.

Pain shot up her shoulder as the RPG kicked back, but it wasn't enough to deter her from watching the missile scream through the forest and slam into the towering platform, effectively and efficiently putting the robot out of commission.

"Another timely intervention with explosives, marine," the witcher said as he came back up, still firing at smaller geth units that were still trying to pursue the group, "Can you get up?"

She could, but she certainly didn't want to, as both her legs were bruised and sore from the accident she had been in, but she hauled herself up all the same. Taking a sleek grey pulse rifle with her to go along with her new hand cannon and RPG.

"We need to move further into the forest," the witcher said as he grabbed hold of the sled and started pulling, dodging blue pulse rounds the entire time.

Williams ducked behind a relatively undamaged tree and returned fire, "There's a leshen in this forest!"

"I know! But these geth don't."

Well that's cruel.

Muscles screamed at her as she and the quarian continued to cover their retreat and the witcher pulled the sled full of weapons further into the dark woods. That explosion must have really messed her up, though nothing seemed broken, just sore, as though someone hadn't been entirely gentle when they had tossed her into a sled and drug her halfway across the colony.

"Why are they chasing us so doggedly?" Williams asked, realizing that it made no sense for the robots to waste as many units as they were chasing down three unimportant organics.

"You're aware of the Beacon?"

Ashley almost lost her concentration, as it was she needed to hold down the trigger a few seconds longer to finish off the red trooper she was currently engaged with, "Yeah but… How did you know?"

"Found a few archeologists, sent them on a different route," the mutant replied as he continued to pump his legs, leaving a trail of raked leaves and flattened mud, "They gave me some other Prothean tech they had, and I upped the power signature on them."

The rifle in her hands overheated from constant firing, and she tossed it into the sled to cool off as she grabbed her old dirty Avenger when the reality of what he said hit her.

"Wait, they think we have the Beacon?"

"They're literally betting their lives on that, Freya dammit Kara, who taught you how to shoot!?"

"Shut up! Bosh'tet!"

Ashley looked over at the quarian, still confused as to how the alien fit into everything. Part of her was a little paranoid, being that her people were the ones who had created the geth, but honestly, most of her was still just concerned about how to make her more effective at killing geth, which would help Ashley stay alive.

"Tap your trigger finger!" the marine coached the quarian, "And let the gun settle down after each burst!"

"But remember to keep retreating!" the witcher, Shepard apparently being the mutant's name, added on, "We're getting close…"

They continued to fall back, Ashley running through weapons every thirty seconds, cycling through rifles and shotguns on the sled, grabbing the closest cold one and burning through it at an impressive clip, and taking out an even more impressive number of mechanical opponents.

Even Kara, the quarian, seemed to settle down, she was no N7, but give the skinny girl some time, and some food, and she'd be decent marine. The, presumably young, girl was holding herself together pretty well, considering the fact they were under fire, her life was in danger, oh, and she was fighting the very thing that had made exiles and nomads out of her entire species.

As they pushed, the forest around them changed, becoming more congested. The flora looking more twisted, and sinister. Everything around here looked, old, primal. Like the most ancient forests on the Homeworld, but only using plants native to Eden Prime.

Then the geth doubled down.

"What did you call them?" Kara asked quietly as the gunshots died and the trio took stock of what was coming closer.

"I called the shorter ones destroyers," Ashley answered, just as quietly.

Two destroyers moved through the forest, knocking over saplings and trampling ferns, their hulking, heavy forms snapping low hanging branches in the much thicker woods they had ventured into. But even their menacing, powerful forms paled in comparison the giant, monolithic platform that they were flanking.

Fifteen feet tall, so high that the flashlight head ripped through the lower canopy, and at least six feet wide at the shoulders, enough that the thinner, gnarled trees they were encountering now had to be pushed aside, though it did so with ease. Its white armor looked thick, impenetrable even to the RPG Williams still had slung across her back.

Dozens of geth troopers, ranging from the standard trooper, to the bright red rocket unit, to the highly aggressive white shock soldiers. All of them moving with the three massive platforms, creating a wave of geth they weren't likely to survive.

The biggest geth shoved two gnarled trees aside and stepped between them, its eye glowing menacingly, when the trees snapped back, despite the fact the mechanical facsimile of a quarian was still holding them. The alien wooded lifeform seemed to come alive as it pushed back, overpowering the monolithic titan and crushing the armored body in a spray of hydraulic fluid.

The two destroyers stopped immediately, seemingly stunned at what they had witnessed. Probably why one of them failed to see the slender form step out from the shadows next to it and smash razor sharp, wooded claws through steel and ceramics, gutting the mech in a single stroke of unreal, unimaginable strength.

The second one saw, and even raised its chaingun, but a cloud came over the lanky figure, and burst apart into the small flying mammals that inhabited the skies of Eden Prime, causing the blue torrent to strike air. The mammals reformed directly behind the destroyer, and the robot tried to follow, but before it could complete its turn, the slender form reappeared and sent another impossibly sharp and strong wooded claw through the geth's head. Showing off its supernatural strength once more, the human caricature pulled the flashlight down, through its torso and all the way through its waist, completely bisecting the destroyer with its own head.

The other geth at this point likely would have opened fire on the creature that had quite literally eviscerated their most powerful units, but found themselves under attack, from the ground.

Roots erupted from moss covered dirt, encapsulating entire geth and crushing them against the ground. Or simply spearing right through them. In one case, the wooden appendages had even turned two geth towards each other, so that when their weapons went off, they only shot each other.

The whole affair took only thirty to forty seconds, but resulted in every single robot being destroyed, and the entire forest was now shrouded in an unnatural, and eerie silence.

The slender figure, draped in the grotesque shroud of death, fixed an eyeless, bleached white skull gaze upon the trio, and once more was enveloped in a misty black cloud before exploding into another swarm of those small flying mammals that were so like and unlike bats.

"Keelah, was that…"

"The leshen," Shepard confirmed.

The quarian girl was wide eyed, not that Ashley was much better. She had never actually seen the thing before. Though to be fair, all who did, didn't live to describe it, so that might be for the best.

"And you came here to kill that thing?"

Shepard just harrumphed in the affirmative before picking up the sled and marching back towards the forest that was now littered with dead geth, "They won't fall for this trick forever, they might already be over it. We need to try and find the actual beacon…"

There was a roar in the air, causing both females to nearly jump out of their skins. Williams didn't _know_ why Kara jumped, but if she had to guess, it was for the same reason she had. The quarian had assumed the leshen was back to finish the job, just like the marine had.

The truth, fortunately for the two non monster slayers, was far more benign, and a sign that things might be turning out for the better. A ship, small, arrowhead shaped, and plastered with Alliance colors, flashed over them, barely visible through the small openings in the canopy on its way towards the dig site, presumably bringing a host of marines.

The witcher, doing as he had done since he had first saved Ashley in the excavation, took charge, "Kara, go back to the ship. Try and get in contact with that vessel. You'll have to be our coordinator between the two of us and whatever forces they'll land."

Viper eyes focused on Ashley next, "Marine, you and I are going to try and link up with them. We need to find this Beacon before the geth do."

"What about that ship? The giant… squid… thing…" _Smooth, Williams._

Shepard shrugged, "We'll have to hope whoever's piloting that ship isn't dumb enough to stay in range of that thing's weapons."

He focused back on the young quarian girl, "Can you find the ship, Kara?"

She nodded, but had one clear reservation, "What about the leshen?"

The witcher huffed in amusement, "From what I can hear, its got bigger, geth related problems. Go, he'll leave you alone."

 **What do you guys think? Too much detail? Should I have shortened up some fights or do you not mind Eden Prime fleshing out into two chapters? Did I gloss over the leshen a little too much? It's kind of the star of any show you have, right? One would think that it should sort of take center stage, but its hard to do that in a situation like this. They are inherently malevolent towards anything that doesn't belong in their forest, so I can't see any sort of true team up going on, as it wouldn't take long for the leshen to just turn on our heroes. Now using it as a natural trap seems like something you might get away with, particularly if there are lots of other threats to pull its attention away.**

 **Drop a review, might not get a chapter out for a while, I have quite a busy schedule over the next few weeks, probably going to be working thirteen, fourteen hours a day for the next month, plus turkey hunting season is upon us (or me at least). Hopefully I get a chapter out in there, but you never know.**

 **Also, you guys didn't tell me what you thought of Occultist Saren! Very disappointed. A lot of you said he was stupid, in the way turkeys are stupid in the way that if you shoot one, the rest will all drop what they're doing and stare at the dead one instead of fleeing, but nothing beyond that. Your opinions, I need them. I live off of them.**

 **They sustain me on a quantum level.**


	6. Chapter 6

Every species reacted to the sword differently. Truthfully, every individual reacts to the sword differently, but members of the same species, while varying in the degrees of their reaction, had similar tendencies.

Humans, elves, and dwarves all got that flash of fear in their eyes. Most people in the Alliance, in other words the aforementioned races, were told stories of witcher's skills with their signature blades. Many were raised with the knowledge that killing was second nature to the mutated humans, a notion that was certainly not untrue, as it was literally the reason they existed, but they were also raised knowing that the most lethal weapon in their arsenal was the most low tech and barbarous of the lot.

Asari seemed to laugh it off. The many asari commandoes turned pirate that Shepard had exterminated with all the prejudice he would assign a nest of nekkers had openly laughed at the witcher when he had unsheathed Grey Wolf. Of course, their laughter never lasted long. It was hard to laugh when your mouth is no longer connected to your lungs. Arrogance was the pitfall so many of the galaxy's 'best' warriors fell right into. Even the justicar he had slain on a backwater Terminus colony had treated the deadly blade with disdain and confusion, as though she thought him a savage. Not that she thought anything anymore.

Turians always treated the exposed blade with respect. The militant culture they hail from typically instills a great level of respect for reliability, and no weapon was more reliable than a good, sharp edge. Add on to that the level to which the average turian studied military history and most had a great deal of fondness for the days, and weapons, of yore. Even if ancient turians didn't battle with swords, but instead with something that more resembled six foot long maces.

Salarians were simply terrified of Grey Wolf, thin skinned and long as they were, it wasn't difficult to pierce their skin or separate their limbs. Batarians honestly had the same reaction to it as they had with anything human, they hated it with all their being, many to the point of hopeless and irrational rabidity.

Krogans got excited at the sight of it, which was weird, considering they might actually be the easiest ones to kill with the sword. Sure, their ability to regenerate is impressive, and even outstrips a witcher with a dose of Swallow swimming in his veins, but even they can't grow back entire organs, and Grey Wolf was expertly crafted with the very specific purpose of cutting vital ones out. As big and slow, in comparison to a mutated warrior such as a witcher anyway, they are, their desire to meet the drawn sword with close combat was ultimately a self-defeating philosophy. Not that Shepard minded, they were tough sons-a-bitches otherwise.

Every species was different, but now Wolf was getting a first hand look at how a non-organic race would react to a drawn sword. So far, the answer appeared to be nothing short of total confusion.

For whatever reason, every time the dark haired mutant leapt over the cover of a group of geth troopers the robots would spread out, making it much easier for him to swing his blade around and attack multiple troopers from different angles. The current trio Shepard was in the process of fileting had just made the same mistake as the last cluster of four, and the pair before them, and had tried to make distance between them.

The fine edge of Grey Wolf cut through the elastic 'muscles' of one grey armored geth's arm and cut through control wiring that was meant to be protected by the tough artificial material. The troopers arm went limp, causing the mechanical soldier to forgo its ability to fire the rifle held in both hands.

Perhaps it was simply a total and complete lack of experience with this sort of tactic? It wasn't like the geth had much history fighting anything but quarians, and they weren't exactly using sharpened sticks at the time.

A precise thrust combined with a twist of his hips and bend in his knees saw Shepard simultaneously dodge pulse rounds from the second grey armored geth, while impaling what he had deduced was the main processor on the white armored shock trooper through a crease in the segmented chest armor no wider than a centimeter.

But from what little he knew about geth, they should be working as groups, learning and sharing their knowledge instantaneously through a communications network shared exclusively among active platforms. One would think that a bunch of AI's would be able to conceive a better defensive measure based on the half dozen or so such encounters. Unless something was making communications difficult for them.

Wolf slung the tip of Grey Wolf around to throw off the barrel of the second trooper's rifle and realigned the master-crafted sword and plunged it through the unarmored abdomen, severing power and data lines. The witcher proceeded to lift the surprisingly light mechanical soldier off its feet and fling it into the first robot, keeping the injured geth from regripping its rifle to fire with its other hand and knocking it to the ground where a quick thrust of the fine silver/dimeritium edge ended its life.

Operation? Programming? No… Life was a good enough word for it. The things were obviously intelligent, after all, if not terribly bright on an individual level.

The sharp drumming of an assault rifle brought the witcher's attention back to his companion, the marine he had saved back at the dig site, as she laid down covering fire for the mutated warrior as he cleared the geth in front.

The woman was young, but had the presence and bearing of someone who had been in multiple firefights before, despite the fact Wolf was absolutely sure the only action she had ever seen had been in training. She had solid aim and control over the weapon she was using, one of the Alliance's standard Avenger assault rifles if he wasn't mistaken, and had actually done a decent job of keeping up with a witcher, which was not something easily done.

Shepard moved to flank the group of geth the marine was keeping suppressed. He was low on ammunition for all of his weapons, which was unfortunate as they seemed to be particularly effective against the machines, but had a surplus of bombs still attached to his belt. Unfortunately the six geth currently trading shots with the young woman at the top of the hill were all spread out. Not a good defense measure when taking on someone with a sword, but it was a good defense against being wiped out by a couple of grenades or the spray of an automatic weapon.

Wolf flung a small grenade at the nearest shock trooper, the bomb rolling to the feet of the white armored geth and ducked behind his own cover that consisted of little more than the burnt out remains of a skycar.

It was more than enough protection, however, as the Samum detonated in earsplitting bang and a blinding flash that was enough to knock out a pack of nekkers and put a fiend into a state of delirium for several seconds. As Shepard leapt over the carbonized husk of the destroyed transport, he saw that it wasn't quite as effective against robots as it was against monsters, but still was able to draw the geth out of cover in an attempt to escape what it had likely thought was a prelude to a barrage of gunfire.

To be fair, it was, just not from him, as a hail of bullets ripped through the tough mechanical soldier and dropped it.

"Gun's hot!"

The witcher just grunted in reply, not that she would have heard it from where she was, and drew Quen on the generator the shock trooper had been using for cover, making it much tougher for the geths' redirected assault to chip away at. The blue pulse rounds bounced off the orange energy barrier surrounding the large engine, and gave Shepard the reprieve he needed to survey the five remaining droids.

His ammunition situation hadn't changed, neither had the fact that they were too far spread out for bombs to be materially effective, but he had just gotten a lot closer. Close enough, in fact, to try some signs, and with one red rocket trooper at the back with a great view of each of its comrades, Shepard had just found his target.

Axii was a complex gesture, but any witcher who wanted to last long mastered it as quickly as they could. It was useful for a variety of situations. Manipulating law enforcement, calming down hysteric witnesses or grieving loved ones were the most obvious ones, but it was also well known amongst most witchers that Axii was useful against electronics. Specifically anything that had any sort of programming. If one was skilled enough with the sign, they could open electronically locked doors, appear invisible to surveillance systems, or even pilot a small craft without ever touching the controls.

Of course, anything of great sophistication was much harder to control. Shepard couldn't pilot his ship with Axii, nor could he convince the VI that managed credit accounts at his bank to fill his with a million credits. If he wanted to do that, he technically could, but it would also ruin the hardware running the software, and it would be easy to trace that back to him. But honestly, Wolf wasn't terribly concerned if he permanently damaged a geth platform.

The bright blue lens caught the entire gesture, and absorbed every little bit of the magical energy as the witcher imposed his will on the robot. Sparks flew as circuits overloaded, but Shepard felt the meager resistance give way, and ducked down as he gave the red rocket trooper one directive.

Even as the first rocket impacted one of the four other geth, the dark haired mutant flipped over and sat with his back against the spell protected generator he was using as cover, and pulled out his rifle. The gun was built like a brick shithouse, and took punishment like one, but sand and dirt were always still a concern where moving parts were concerned.

Another rocket flew out, exploding relatively nearby and shaking the ground around the witcher a little bit, but he paid no mind as he ensured the chamber was clean and clear of any small debris that could cause a jam.

Next was his sword as another explosion rocked his general location, though this time it was accompanied by the shattered body of a grey armored geth trooper. The blade was tough, using advanced forging techniques and chemical treatments to harden the typically soft silver/dimeritium alloy, but already viper eyes were able to pick out rough spots on the fine edge, places where the metal was rolling over on itself, creating a dull spot on the blade. The good news was that Grey Wolf was still structurally sound. No bends, no chips, no scratches, all it needed in the end was a good sharpening and cleaning.

A quick peek around the corner saw a third geth explode into shrapnel just as the fourth geth finally put down the red rocket trooper Shepard had converted. The last robot had also made the mistake of standing out in the open to do it, and the young woman at the top of the hill made it pay for the error, her newly cooled off assault rifle making quick work of the platform.

"Clear?"

Viper eyes rolled, he understood the reason for such a question, and why she was so rigid with it, but he still found it annoying, "Clear…"

The marine came down the hill, rifle never lowering as she religiously checked her corners. Her movements were quick and crisp, as though she were still in the middle of a firefight. It was one part where one could definitely see the inexperience come in. The poor girl wasn't nervous, those feelings would have gone out the window as soon as she started trading fire, it was the same reason she wasn't scared, she'd already be dead if she was truly scared. No, she was simply raw, inexperienced. The young woman wasn't a jaded old man like the Wolf, she literally expected everything, all the time.

"Where's the beacon from here?"

The marine pointed the barrel of her rifle down a gorge that lead near the dig site he had saved her from, "LT told me they had moved it from dig site to a nearby staging area to have it transported to the spaceport."

"You think they managed to get it to the spaceport?" Shepard asked, even though he already knew the answer.

"… I doubt it."

He huffed in amusement, as close to a full on laugh as he was capable of, "Me too."

"Do you think… nevermind."

Shepard cocked an eyebrow over a yellow eye as he followed the marine through the rocky gorge in the semi-urbanized town that existed solely to support the archeological dig and the nearby spaceport, "Do I think what?"

"Do you think the geth are attacking other colonies, right now?"

That was a good question. The answer was no, but Shepard didn't really want to get into it right now, "Tell you what, let's kick the geth off this colony, then we'll worry about the others."

She scoffed at his response, "Right, like a witcher would care about other people."

"That's right, too busy kidnapping small children and communing with demons to care about the people's welfare."

The marine gave him a sneer in response, something to which the dark haired witcher responded with his patented 'ghost of a smile'.

Shepard didn't mind her attitude, he'd heard it his entire life from all different sorts of persons. There were traditionalists within the Church of the Eternal Fire who preached that mutants like him were abominations of nature, which to be fair, they were. Most of the Church has changed significantly over the past few centuries, focusing less on what to hate, and more on how to have compassion, but stories transcended generations, and with no active witcher presence within common society, only ever appearing to do some killing, there was no way for the average person to see past the horror and gore they associated the mutants with. And, if he was being honest with himself, witchers weren't helping themselves on that front, being wanderers that were always strangers everywhere they went, unfamiliar and only appearing whenever there was trouble.

Besides, filling out the back end of her armor the way she was, this marine was easy to forgive.

…

Jane flexed her hand and pulled it back, her arm pulsing blue as she did, lifting two of the mechanical invaders into the air and leaving them in a weightless state and unable to fall. At least until Kaidan reached out with his own hand, flashing a bright orange, and slammed it down, mimicking what happened to the poor machines caught in Jane's biotics and Kaidan's magic.

The N7 let her arm go back to normal as she lined her assault rifle up with another of the grey ones, peppering it with rounds that quickly overwhelmed its relatively weak barriers and shredded its thin armor. Next to her, the sorcerer spread his bright orange hands, spreading a thin magical barrier that deflected an incoming salvo of pulse rounds and giving the woman a chance to train her rifle on the exposed robots.

This pair proved to be a little stronger than the grey armored variety, as they managed to absorb enough fire from her to make it back into cover, which also meant they had ceased their own shooting. A critical mistake when facing a battle mage.

The Lieutenant's hands pulsed bright orange again as he waved his arms down towards the ground before ripping them up and clenching his fists. The boulder the two white armored droids had hunkered down behind flashed the same bright orange as Kaidan's hands, before exploding, somehow only sending shrapnel in the direction of the mechanical soldiers, completely eviscerating the two.

The biotic regarded the sorcerer after the display of raw power. The man was, as he had said himself, not exceptionally powerful, and the effort was showing as sweat ran down his brow.

"You going to be alright?"

The man rolled his neck and gave an out of breath sigh, "Yeah, I'll be fine. Just expended a little more energy than I had planned on. You know, ambush and all."

"I thought energy regulation as a biotic was difficult," the biotic told him.

"Eh," he shrugged, "It's comparable. It's a different kind of tired when I overuse my magic though. Like muscles that don't exist are tired, but my arms and legs are all still fine, you know?"

"No, I don't."

"No… You wouldn't."

Shepard looked around the field, and the scattered pieces of the robotic invaders lying in the ruined greenery of the natural countryside, "I don't like this. Such an extensive force just to steal a beacon? You'd think they'd send small, coordinated strike teams to hit key targets. Knock out communications, air defenses, and secure the beacon, but instead they land a giant dreadnought, fly a fleet into orbit, land thousands of troops, then completely ignore the city and go only after a single Prothean beacon."

"Well, maybe the only fighting force they had are these weird mechs, so a fast, sophisticated strike force wasn't on the table."

The redhead shook her head, "These things are faster than any mech I've seen, more fluid, and definitely a lot smarter. So much so I think they may be AI controlled. They could organize strike teams, I'm sure of it."

Kaidan shrugged, "Maybe they're sending a message. 'Look at how powerful we are.'"

The biotic shook her head again, "If they are, whoever wanted to send it is stupid. Let's keep going."

"Right- Do you hear that?"

She did hear it. Gunfire in the direction of the archeological dig. The N7 picked up her feet and raced through the small copse of trees separating them and the noise. Jane didn't need to look to know that the sorcerer was right behind her.

It was a good thing she didn't look, considering if she had she might have missed the pair of drones flying in, filling the air with pulse rounds and nearly ripping the two to pieces. More than a few shots pounded off of her barriers, same likely going for Alenko as they both split up and found something to hide behind as the flying harassers buzzed around, continuing to annoy the pair of soldiers.

The Avenger in her hands found its way to her back, folding up on the magnetic holster as she pulled the giant Hexer from its leather holster on her thigh. Superior stopping power to any other hand cannon in the galaxy, the pistol was designed as a military answer to pirates and slavers increased use of necrophages as shock troops. Typically, if they knew there were going to be a lot of necrophages in advance, the Navy would do their best to contract a witcher to accompany the mission, but if one wasn't available, the Hexer would still put a ghoul down with efficiency, as well as a bloodraging krogan.

Lightly shielded drones were just as easy to put down, the hyper velocity slug shattering barriers and coring one of the small machines with ease. Across the wooded copse of trees, Kaidan was having a little more difficulty than her, as his drone was significantly more erratic than hers had been, perhaps a response to how easily the first one had been taken down. Fortunately, magic didn't need a sharpshooter to find its target, and it didn't take much energy to take out such a small machine.

A bolt of pure orange energy sliced right through the drone, cutting it neatly in half vertically.

Silence reigned… for a full five seconds before more pulse rifle fire came out of the clearing on the other end of the trees, from the same direction as the archeological dig and pounded into the hardwood trees and glanced off their barriers.

Seven more of those bipedal mechs were laying down fire on their position as they advanced towards the trees, alternating their trigger pulls so as to keep the humans suppressed. They were doing a fairly good job of it, as the blue pulse rounds chipped away at the trunk Shepard was hunkered down behind.

Pulsing blue, the biotic upped her barriers with a significant conscious effort, and leaned out, not flinching under the rounds that pounded her shields as she lined the Hexer up with white armored trooper… and watched as a sword erupted out from the mech's abdomen and ripped out.

A grey armored robot turned on the new aggressor, only to be quite unceremoniously flung across the woods and slammed into a tree by an invisible force presumably emanating from the man standing in place of the gutted droid.

Two more of the mechanical soldiers turned from the pair of Alliance soldiers in the trees to focus on the man, only to find their weapons useless as their shots rebounded off of a dull orange bubble surrounding the newcomer, and found themselves under fire from a hidden shooter.

With four of the original seven robots either dealt with, or otherwise busy, Jane chose not to waster her opportunity as she cored one of the enemy droids through its flashlight eye.

Kaidan had a similar outlook on the situation, pulling his Tempest out and cutting the barriers down on the other two, letting Shepard plug a powerful round right through center mass, sending both mech's to the ground in a shower of sparks and white hydraulic fluid.

The unseen rifleman had finally put down both machines, clearly high fire rate weapons weren't as effective against the robot's thick armor plating, and the noise reduced to the distant din of anti-aircraft defenses firing on the edges of the city in background. Jane didn't know if there were still enemy shuttles flying around, but it was probably wise to keep the air impassable, lest the enemy commander decided that the beacon wasn't enough and wanted the colony on top of that. Though, with that huge squid ship just hanging out, she wasn't sure the anti-aircraft guns would be able to stop it.

The two marines from the Normandy moved out of the woods to join up with the swordsman and what revealed herself to be an Alliance marine. Probably a member of the garrison stationed on Eden Prime, though the fact she was alone, and with a witcher no less, didn't say good things about the situation.

"What's your name, marine?"

The young marine, a fairly tall brunette wearing that ridiculous white and pink Colossus armor, was dirty and battered, looking as though she had already been through the ringer and more, "Gunnery Sergeant Ashley Williams, sir."

Jane preferred ma'am, but that wasn't really an important facet of their communication at the moment, "I'm Commander Jane Shepard," Ashley blinked at the mention of the N7's name, "and this is Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko. Where is your squad?"

Williams shook her head, "We were defending the dig site, trying to keep the enemy from getting the beacon, when that dreadnought came down. It fired on the dig site after they figured out it wasn't there. I haven't heard from anyone else, I don't think anyone made it."

"How'd you survive?" Kaidan asked as he finally made his way over.

The young marine pointed back at the witcher who was apparently too busy poking around the insides of the mech's to come over and speak with them, "Witcher, was here to take care of the leshen, but the geth showed up first. He and some quarian he apparently knows, saved me in the initial fight and drug me out of the dirt. For what its worth, he also got the leshen involved in the fight. Around here you're alright, but I'd recommend we stay out of the forest."

Jane nodded, "Well hopefully that keeps the bulk of their forces occupied, do you know where the beacon is?"

"Only one place it can be, provided its still on the planet."

Shepard looked at Kaidan, who had provided the insight, and nodded in agreement, "Spaceport. One last thing Williams, do you know what these things are?"

"Geth," something rasped quietly from the side, drawing the surprised gazes of all three soldiers to the witcher who, despite being larger than all of them, had somehow managed to walk right up next to them without being noticed.

"How did you figure that out? Geth haven't been seen outside the Perseus Veil for three hundred years," the sorcerer of the group seemed unsure of the witcher's assessment.

"Body shape, other than the flashlight heads they're a perfect match for quarian physiology," the scarred man pulled a piece of tech from his belt, taken from one of the machines lying in pieces, "Tech inside these things, significantly newer and more advanced than anything you'll find on the Migrant Fleet, but exact same architecture. Communication ports are even a dead match. It has to be geth."

"What's your name?" Jane asked, for the first time having seen the Wolf's head medallion hanging from his neck and the snarling wolves that made up the pommel of his sword, "I'm…"

"I heard your names," he cut her off, "It's good to finally meet you by the way. My sister, your grandmother, won't stop talking about you."

…

Watching a witcher in combat was something else entirely, Jane decided. There was no doubt that as an N7 and a biotic, she was quite possibly one of the most highly trained, efficient, and deadly soldiers in the galaxy. Kaidan was a trained battle mage, though not terribly powerful he was more capable than most. Even Ashley, though Shepard had just met her, was proving to be incredibly accurate with various weapons, Avenger assault rifle, Mantis sniper rifle, Predator pistol, and solid in the face of enemy fire.

They all paled in comparison to the mutated warrior that took point.

His movements were too fast for her mere mortal eyes to follow accurately, his sword slicing through the air in a flash of dull silver, cutting apart geth with ruthless efficiency. Everywhere he went he disrupted the hostile AI, making them easier for the trio of Alliance soldiers to pick off, and did more than his fair share of killing himself.

His spells, or as Kaidan had called them earlier, his 'signs', were incredibly effective and always perfectly timed. Whether it was a blast of that telekinesis that would flatten several platforms at once, or an orange shield to absorb gunfire, or a purple hex that slowed enemy units down, confused them, and made them ultimately useless, they were all deployed only to their maximum effectiveness.

Then there were his guns. Guns, not mass accelerators, as they fired chemically propelled slugs to surprising effectiveness. He didn't use them often, even less than his signs, but when they were used they made quick work of the mechanical invaders, punching huge holes through thick armor and hardened electronics. In fact, as she got a good look at that massive hand cannon he used so judiciously, her own pistol, the Hexer, was a clone of that weapon, just modified to exclusively fire mass accelerator rounds.

Plus there was the fact that he was her great uncle. The brother to sweet old Grandma Hroki Cerys Shepard, who had birthed Jane's father out of wedlock, who helped raise Jane while her father and mother served in the Alliance, who had cried for days after her son and Jane's father had died. The wonderful old lady who spoke about her brother, the witcher, the warrior, the guardian of innocence against the nightmares in the wilderness, as if he were Geralt of Rivia himself.

Well, as she watched him clamber up the back of a fifteen foot tall geth destroyer and roast its insides with some sign she hadn't seen him use before, one could very easily be convinced that he was indeed, the fabled White Wolf reborn.

The foursome moved through the small town that was little more than a few prefab shelters for the archeologists to sleep in while they weren't digging. The geth found there were no match for the well rounded group, Kaidan and Shepard, the female Shepard, controlled the battlefield from the back line with a mixture of Alenko's magic and Jane's biotics, while Williams and Shepard, the witcher Shepard, did most of the actual killing. The chemistry was a bit off, however, as neither Ashley, or Jane's great uncle took advantage of some of the timely openings provided by the rear pair, and Kaidan and the Commander weren't always anticipating openings for their abilities that the fore pair were providing.

"Commander," the gunny called from up front, pointing up the hill, "Spaceport's just over that ridge!"

The N7 looked up and over the hill. The tower had all but been destroyed by the landing of the giant dreadnought, or at least that's what Ashley claimed. The fact it wasn't there, stretching high into the sky, seemed to confirm that, as well as the ominous red glow coming from the hilltop.

"Keep pressing, geth seem to have fallen off," Shepard ordered when the witcher decided to give his own assessment of the upcoming terrain.

"Got a lot of bodies ahead… desiccated… interesting."

The three humans followed the superhuman up the hill and into an open space framed by prefabricated shelters. In the center there was a mound of corpses, all of them stripped of their clothing and callously tossed into the pile at the center.

"By the Fire…" Williams breathed.

Kaidan spat onto the ground, disgust and rage clear on his face at the sight, while Jane simply stared at the pile, soaking in the details of the corpses as her great uncle casually walked up to the collection and began poking and prodding the bodies.

"Definitely dehydrated, skin is wrinkled and dry, little to no fat deposits, all musculature is completely solid," the witcher pulled a stainless steel knife from his belt and cut the skin open, "No blood- sorry, no liquid blood. Only dust."

"Will you stop stabbing dead people and leave them in peace?" Williams hissed at the male Shepard kneeling over one of the bodies lying apart from the pile, for his part, the monster slayer merely shrugged.

"Doesn't matter much, already know what happened to them."

"What was it?" Jane asked, looking both at the witcher and the sorcerer who was standing off to the side, shaking his head and cursing under his breath.

"I'm guessing the Lieutenant here has only ever heard stories of it," Kaidan nodded at the larger man's statement, "But I've seen this before, on one hunt I'll never forget."

"You telling me a monster did this?"

"It was a monster," he affirmed before expanding upon the revelation, "But it was no Post-Conjunction creature."

"Necromancy," Kaidan spat.

…

"Another one, odd, a turian this time… and his face is… missing?"

The N7's eyes widened at the sight of the Spectre lying on the ground, withered and desiccated, just like the pile of human bodies over the hill. Unlike the other bodies, Nihlus Kryik was missing… his face?

"What is this?" Ashley asked the question on everyone's minds as she stared down at the rough square of flesh that was missing from the cranium of the deceased, "Why would they do this?"

The witcher of the group leaned down and tilted the head, giving the foursome a better look at the cavity and discovering another gruesome detail, "Brain's missing too… Hm! Tongue's still there. I don't know who did this, or why, but I can tell you that whatever this person has planned for this one, is not what he had planned for the others."

"Too bad this one wasn't better at hiding," Kaidan said as he pointed out a bullet riddled corpse nearby, "But I have to wonder why he wasn't taken the same way the others were…"

"Geth got him first?" Ashley asked as she kept her rifle pointed out, keeping a perimeter secure, just as she had been trained. Girl was a solid soldier, there was no doubt about that.

Still, she was wrong about what killed the civilian by the boxes, and for once it was Jane's turn to wear the detective cap, "No, wounds aren't consistent with pulse rifles. Standard ballistics were used in this instance, high caliber, and it was done in a fit of rage."

"An act of passion?" Alenko seemed suspicious of the reasoning, though it was clear he couldn't deny the evidence, "Guy doesn't look like much. Fairly average looking, nothing to indicate he even put up a struggle."

The witcher of the group stepped closer to the body and kneeled over it, looking closer at the face, "Some evidence of plastic surgery, but no evidence of prior wounds that would have required it. He's not particularly good looking, you're right, he's average looking, in every sense of the word."

"This is getting us nowhere, capture an image if you want, but we need to move," the N7 finally said, regaining command of the situation, though she did see her great uncle activate his omnitool briefly before standing.

"Stack up, Shepard… Freya dammit, I can't keep calling you my name, do you have a first name?"

"Call me Wolf."

"Fine… Wolf, you have point, then me, then Williams, Alenko you have our backs so stay sharp!"

…

"Bombs, seriously?" Ashley yelled over the roar of a destroyer's chaingun, "Why? To wipe away all evidence they were ever hear except for the entire city, the dozens of transmissions that left the planet, the frigate full of Alliance personnel?"

She raised some good points, Wolf thought as he launched a quick kick to a shock trooper's knee and slammed his stainless steel combat knife through its 'eye' socket. The mutant kicked the droid to the side and grabbed the barrel of a regular grey armored trooper's rifle and pushed the weapon up and away and a quick jab of the knife still in his other hand severed the optics cable allowing the geth to actually use its optics.

Confronted with blindness, the machine hesitated in its struggles with the witcher and paid for this mistake with a trip over the handrails and onto the tram tracks below.

A third trooper had likely sought its chance to end the monster slayer's life, but fortunately Shepard's partner was dialed in as the unfortunate platform glowed a dark blue and slammed into the steel strut he and his grand niece were using as cover. Wolf followed up with a hand that reached into the unit's unarmored abdomen and up through its chest cavity, grabbing the stunned machine's main CPU and giving it a good tug.

The elder Shepard looked back to the younger, giving the young woman a nod of appreciation and pulled his hand cannon from under his right shoulder and plugged a white shock trooper through the chest and its main power supply as it tried to come up on the two from the steel strut behind the pair.

 _Two shots left._

For her part, Jane didn't even flinch at the action, belying her extensive field experience in spite of her extremely young age.

"We need to get rid of that destroyer so the Lieutenant can work on disarming the bombs," she told him as her biotics pulsed again, tossing the newly made piece of trash and flinging it into a pair of geth that were trying to sneak around the walkway into their cover.

Viper eyes surveyed the situation as Wolf asked, "Any ideas?"

An angry sigh answered before her words did, "None, Kaidan's exhausted and doesn't have the juice to take it down and my biotics aren't anywhere near powerful enough. You have any explosives?"

Several, none of them designed to punch through armor. If he could get close enough to slip a Grapeshot between armor plates that would kill it, but he could get away with a dash of Igni if that were the case. Truth be told, no one was getting close enough to the armored juggernaut to pull that off anyway. There were plenty of clear paths to the thing, and that was the problem, there was no cover. His rifle was empty, or he'd put a round through the chaingun like he had when he had pulled Williams out of the dig site.

Of course, there was the RPG on said marine's back on the other side of the tram station. If only they had rockets to put in the damn thing. If the kid over on the other side with the marine had been at full strength, instead of slogging through miles of battlefield, he'd be able to punch a hole the size of a man right through its chest, but as it was, the Lieutenant was barely able to kill a grey trooper, and was relying more on his firearms than his magic.

If only he had brought his sniper rifle, the Widow. That thing could punch through a shaelmar's armor, and would likely make the destroyer's thick armor plating look like tissue paper. Unfortunately, that thing was on his ship, which… which he could actually see from where he was, parked on a landing pad just over a mile right behind and slightly above the monolithic geth platform that was still spewing death at absurd rates.

"Kara, do you copy?"

His grand niece looked at him with a look of confusion on her face, "Who are you calling?"

" _I'm here Shepard, I've gotten in contact with the Normandy, like you said!_ "

"Good," the witcher said calmly, "Look, we've got geth setting up explosives, no way to know the yield or how much time, so I need you to do what I say, and do it quickly."

Jane flashed blue as she threw another grey trooper over the railing and onto the tracks far below.

" _I understand, what do you need me to do?_ "

"Go to the weapon's locker, the tall one," Wolf said before pumping his second to last bullet through major data cable running down to the waist of a shock trooper, taking the geth's legs out, and crushed its hooded head underfoot, "Pass code is fifteen sixty two, there's a rifle in there, much bigger than the rest."

" _I see it!_ "

"Take it, and bring it outside, look directly north."

Even from this distance, he could see the ramp on his ship lower, and a small purple figure duck out. He could even see that purple person reach the edge of the landing platform, a thick white bar taller than the purple person standing next to it.

" _Keelah, is that where you are?"_

"Yes, now, without rushing yourself, I need you to lay the rifle on the ground, stands extended," Shepard directed calmly as he gestured to Ashley across the gap, informing her of the two machines advancing on them, "Pull the stock out all the way, and rack the bolt to engage the heat sink."

" _You're not going to make me shoot this thing are you?"_

The N7 in front of him shot a worried glance over her shoulder at him, likely having caught the doubt thick in the young quarian's voice, "You'll be fine, are you ready?"

"… _yes."_

"Look through the sight, make sure to keep your visor back, that thing is going to kick hard enough to send the scope right through your helmet, do you see the destroyer on the bridge?"

"She can do this, right?" Jane finally asked quietly before trading a few shots with a grey armored trooper.

"She's got the steady hands of a surgeon, she'll be fine."

" _Okay, I've got it!_ "

Shepard could see the glint of a scope on the landing pad, "Very good, now, there's no safety on that thing, so you're ready to go. Breath deeply, in through the mouth and out through the nose, when you're settled on the destroyer, breathe in and hold it, stay calm, squeeze the trigger, don't pull. Squeeze it slow, slow, so slow the shot should-"

There was an earsplitting crack followed by a resounding boom as the huge geth's chest exploded outwards, showering the tracks with chunks of ceramic armor, shards of complex circuit boards, and gallons of white hydraulic fluid.

"Nice shot!" the witcher heard Jane say right in front of him.

" _BOOM! That's who taught me to shoot you bosh- OH KEELAH MY SHOULDER!"_

Chuckling, the witcher advanced with the rest of the foursome, quickly overwhelming the few remaining geth, "Yeah, she's got a separated shoulder, minimum."

His grand niece chuckled along as she knelt over a bomb and began to disarm it, a problem solved as easily as ripping the control panel off and pulling a jumper off the integrated circuit board, "Poor girl, you should bring her aboard the Normandy, let our doctor have a look at her. Chakwas might not have a whole lot of experience with quarians, but she might be the best physician in the fleet."

Wolf twisted his fingers to form Axii over a second bomb, convincing the explosive to disarm itself, "Might not be a bad idea, probably going to have to take a trip to this Normandy anyway. Your captain is probably going to want my statement."

"How are you two doing?"

Ashley and Kaidan came up to meet them at the center of the bridge, the group of four standing over the corpse of the destroyer. The marine was battered, bruised, and covered in grime and sweat, but she was standing tall, had to give her that. Her running mate wasn't as dirty, but was clearly a little more exhausted, despite having only been fighting for half the time as Williams. That's what happened when battle mages overused their abilities, either the Lieutenant himself, or his commanding officer would have to figure out how to use them more efficiently. He'd probably need both at the end of the day.

"Bombs disarmed, no sign of any further geth presence," Kaidan answered the Commander, his voice refusing to betray what pouring sweat already had, "Who was that that made the shot?"

"Quarian girl, I hired her to help me upgrade my ship, turns out she's a xenobiologist, or wants to be at least. Begged me to taker her along on my hunts and examine some monsters up close," the witcher looked up to the landing platform and saw the young quarian standing up, holding her left shoulder with her right hand, "Turns out she's not a bad shot with a sniper rifle."

"Can't hit shit with a Tempest though," Ashley chimed in as she looked at the gaping hole in the destroyer, causing Wolf to huff a laugh in response.

"No, no she cannot."

" _You know I can hear everything right?_ "

That infamous ghost of a smile worked its way onto the monster slayer's inexpressive face, "Yeah… it's funnier that way."

"Okay, beacon's still around here somewhere," his grand niece started, taking command once again as was clearly quite natural for her, "They wouldn't have bothered with the bombs otherwise. Let's find it so we can get off this gods forsaken planet."

…

Kara laid back in the cockpit as the painkillers did their work, relaxing under the power of the non-narcotics as one could without actually going out and getting narcotics. Honestly, the young biologist just felt lucky she still had some dextro painkillers with her. She didn't know how Swallow worked, but she was pretty sure it wasn't meant for someone of her biology.

Actually, that wouldn't be a bad idea for her studies. 'Witcher juice' as Shepard called them were obviously incredibly effective on witchers, enhancing many of their already superpowered abilities. If Kara could figure out how, she could possibly figure out how to incite a similar reaction in quarian physiology, even though it'd likely be much less effective. Still, it would be a start.

The nineteen year old quarian wondered why human's hadn't capitalized on such a significant medical advancement literally just sitting under their noses. Shepard had told her that extended personal interactions between non-mutated citizens of the Alliance and the mutated citizens of the Alliance was limited to 'where did you see the monster' and 'what did it look like' and 'let's talk about money'.

Maybe she was one of the few to actually make it past the witcher mystique and actually be around them for long enough to actually learn anything about them. Kara wasn't sure why, but the thought actually made her kind of giddy.

Not that the feeling helped the pit dragging her stomach through the floor. The geth were back, after three hundred years, and she had no clue why.

Were they back to finish off the quarian people? Maybe they had decided to wage war on the humans, or the galaxy at large. Or maybe they were just after the beacon and the slaughter of a few thousand organics.

Kara had to stop herself. It did no good to worry about what she didn't know, and probably wouldn't help her keep her shoulder stable until she could see an actual medical doctor to set it. No, all she had to worry about right now was staying calm.

That was right when Shepard burst up the ramp holding an unconscious young human woman in his arms.

 **Alright ladies, gentlemen, people of less than honorable repute, which I'm sure applies to more of you than the first two do, I am tired. Physically, not mentally. Well, a little mentally, these last two chapters were kind of slogs for me, and unfortunately that comes through in my writing.**

 **The reason they were a slog, is because I have, what I think are great, storylines waiting in the wings, but in order to set them up nice and good, I had to have these two chapters here. Next chapter is where you'll start to see this story really diverge. Femshep and co will still go on through the ME1 storyline, and we'll check in on them fairly frequently, but we'll get to see Mordin and Bortch or Borkh, whichever you prefer, and Mshep take on their own storylines. As a certain mechanical man who resides in a ridiculous future around the year 3000 might say, it's going to be fun on the bun.**

 **Please review, let me know what y'all think, as I am a review vampire, and actually require them to survive. You don't want me to starve to death do you?**


	7. Chapter 7

**So should I bother to continue with this fic? Seems like interest has really dropped off. Should I blame it on the substandard quality of the last few chapters, perhaps due to the story, or does no one actually care about this anymore?**

 **I'll give you guys this one, but if you guys aren't reading I mean, I don't want to write it then.**

Wolf ran his oilstone across the edge of the Grey Wolf, cleaning the rolled metal edge of imperfections. It was a delicate task that took a great deal of meticulous attention to the edge. You had to make sure all the dulled edges were gone, but anyone can do that, but you also have to make sure you aren't over sharpening it, and crumpling the metal on the edge, creating a small, nearly microscopic bur that would severely impact the performance of the blade. Then, you had to make absolutely sure the edge was straight, and that it didn't wobble back and forth along the length of the sword, or it wouldn't cut right and dull even faster than before. Of course, even then, you had to make damn sure you held the oil stone at the right angle. To sharp an angle, and the edge won't be sharp enough. To flat an angle, and the edge would be fragile and prone to dulling too quickly.

Fortunately, everything about the witcher, from his enhanced eyesight to make an eagle envious, to his years as a boy training with swords, caring for them, maintaining and using them every day of his life for the past seventy years, Shepard was a damned expert when it came to sharpening a sword. Even if the medbay lighting of the Normandy wasn't well suited to this kind of work.

Some slight shifting to the monster slayer's side took a little bit of attention off of the oilstone, causing Shepard to lift the smooth rock from metal and look at the young woman lying to his left. The pale faced redhead was just stirring slightly, and still sleeping deeply, though the pained, and perturbed expression on her face was still there.

"Bad dreams," he mumbled under his breath as his attention fell away from his grand niece and back onto his sword.

"What?"

Wolf sighed as he took his oilstone back off his blade and looked to his right, where Kara was sitting with her left arm in a sling. The medical officer aboard the Normandy, a foxy older woman named Karin Chakwas, had set Kara's shoulder back in place after realigning the clavicle, impressing even the witcher with her knowledge of alien biology. Currently, the pair was 'confined' to the medical bay by the Captain David Anderson. The medbay likely wasn't the captain's first choice, but a slight narrowing of his pupils combined with a subtle shifting of his vocal cords to make his voice sound animalistic, and Shepard had cowed the military man into letting him stay in the medbay.

Part of him was worried about what they might be doing to his ship that just barely fit inside the cargo bay of the stealth frigate, but honestly, the thing was so old and outdated they probably wouldn't even consider it worth the effort of tearing it apart, and it wasn't like there were any secrets in its construction. Just a hodgepodge construction effort by a lonesome witcher who wasn't entirely sure what he was doing.

"Bad dreams," he repeated to the quarian as he nodded his head back to Jane lying on the medical bed, "She's having bad dreams."

Kara looked over his shoulder to the other young woman in the care of the good doctor, "How can you tell?"

Shepard blinked at her question, "Her expression?"

The young biologist cocked her head, "Yeah, it's unpleasant, but if she's related to you, that might just be her resting face."

Viper eyes rolled, "Hilarious, and we are related, not that a blood test would ever prove it."

"Why not?"

This time the question came from the silver haired woman sitting at a terminal at her desk. Doctor Chakwas had spun her chair around to look at him curiously.

"Mutations," Wolf answered simply, "DNA test wouldn't even identify me as humanoid. Probably a good thing we can't reproduce. Would hate to imagine the freak that would come out of that."

"Interesting, would you be willing to submit to a blood sample?" the Alliance doctor asked, useless though the question was.

"No. No offense, but the last time a beautiful woman got a hold of my blood, I was forced to kill her. Blood magic, not a nice thing to do to someone."

"Oh, I assure you, my intentions with your blood are pure," Karin Chakwas said before giving the witcher a devilish smile and an exaggerated sweep of her eyes over his body, "It's the rest of you I have untoward intentions with."

At this rate, Grey Wolf was never going to be sharpened completely. Shepard pointed the tip into the deck plating and rested his right hand on the pommel as he regarded the caramel skinned woman and spoke with as much of a husky voice as he could manage, "Should I fear for my health, Doctor?"

There was a significant uptick in the heart rate to his left as Karin crossed her long legs covered by tight, tight, white uniform pants, "If you're asking me that, perhaps its time for a physical…"

His grand niece's breathing had normalized as well, she was wide awake, "Gonna poke and prod me, Doctor?"

The young woman stirred physically at the sound of his voice, though Wolf was fairly sure he was the only one who noticed that she was awake.

Karin certainly didn't notice as she leaned forward and raised a gloved hand to cup her chin as full lips formed a smile that lit up her almond eyes, "I was thinking we'd try it the other way around."

Kara, who had been watching the entire affair from her position perched atop the medical bed, groaned at the two eldest occupants of the room, "Gross…"

"Incredibly…" a tired voice came from the bed to Shepard's left, taking the doctor and the quarian off guard, "Over the top flirtation was not what I needed to wake up to."

"Had to be better than what you saw in your sleep," the witcher replied as he helped his grand niece to a sitting position.

"Ugh, I don't know, I meet my long lost great uncle, and wake up to him hitting on my doctor."

"Hey," Wolf admonished the N7, "She came on to me."

Karin, who had just closed her omnitool, probably messaging the Captain that the Commander was awake, stood to her feet, "I'm far too old to sit around and wait, pro action is the best means to get what you want."

The foxy woman turned an almond colored eye on the dark haired mutant and snapped him a wink, to which he returned with a smoldering look, before she turned back to her patient, "But back to the matter at hand. How are you feeling, Commander?"

"Other than grossed out?" Jane asked with a sly smirk, then immediately winced and grabbed her head with one hand, "I also feel like I just got off my last night of shore leave, what happened?"

"We found the Prothean beacon, active, but damaged," Wolf answered, as the only person in the room who was actually present for the events in question, "Williams moved closer to it to inspect it. Hindsight says probably not the smartest move but…"

"How the hell could she know what was going to happen?" she finished for him, "I remember now, the beacon had lifted Williams into the air, I moved to pull her out…"

"Well you succeeded," Karin told her, "And got yourself in a whole heap of trouble. This Shepard's comments about bad dreams do have me curious about any psychological effects the encounter might have had. Can you tell me about any dreams you might have had? Or have they left you already?"

"No, I… I… remember them… They're just, difficult to put into words, it was like…" her face scrunched up, confusion riddled her lightly freckled face, "I can't describe it, its, out of my reach…"

"Do you remember any kind of lights?" the quarian suddenly asked from her medical bed, omnitool open and reading from some sort of document she had loaded on there, "Their brightness, color, intensity?"

Jane gave the other human and the mutant a confused look before answering, "Uh… dull, red, there was flashing."

"What shapes can you remember?" the nomad continued as she typed something into the document, "Hard, geometrical shapes such as squares, circles, triangles, or more organic, humanoid, saurian, botanical…"

"Vaguely human, two arms, two legs, but there were always…" Shepard's grand niece looked up with a hard look in her green eyes, "It was some sort of people, not any species I'm familiar with, they were hooked up to machines, they were being split apart, surgically. What a fucked up dream…"

"Were there any emotions you felt? Sad, happy, angry?" Kara continued, continuing to enter information into her omnitool, a difficult task considering the sling her left arm was in.

"Pain… a lot of it…"

The door to the medbay opened up and Captain Anderson walked in, his officer's uniform immaculate as it was when the Wolf had not so subtly threatened him with bodily harm should he have attempted to remove the witcher from the side of his grand niece.

"Are you injured, Shepard?"

"No, sir. It was something in my dream that for whatever reason we're psychoanalyzing."

The quarian huffed, "I'm not psychoanalyzing! Besides, I'm not convinced it was a dream, especially considering the nature of Prothean technology and your exposure literally right before the occurrence of this vision."

That was a good point. Prothean technology had a way of messing with people's heads, typically by jamming beta waves directly into the unfortunate target's head. Much of the problem with this is that the visions were designed, presumably, Prothean brains. While most species biological brains were structured fairly similar, even though some species, such as salarians and humans, had significantly more hardware, while others, like vorcha and elcor, had a little less, the structure of each species cognitive functions were radically different. The same question, pursued logically by an asari, human, salarian, and turian, would result in five different answers. If Kara's thought was correct, and Wolf was kicking himself for not having the same thought, then Jane had absorbed a message that would seem logical and obvious to a Prothean, but a human only got a jumbled group of images and sounds if they were lucky. They went comatose and suffered an aneurism if they were unlucky.

"How are you feeling, Shepard?" the captain asked as he approached the medical bed, looking his subordinate in the eye as he did his marked best to ignore the two strangers in the room.

"Green, sir," the N7 told Anderson as she stood up, "Though I would like to know what's going on, sir. How the hell did the geth know the beacon was there? Where did they get that giant ship? There are a lot of questions here that need answering."

"Believe me, Shepard, I would like to know myself, but for now, the loss of the beacon is big, and someone needs to answer for that to the Council, particularly with your potential Spectre status up in the air."

"Well I know where the geth got the information for the beacon," the witcher butted in, much to the Captain's visible chagrin, and his grand niece's interest.

"Where?"

The mutant shrugged, "Isn't it obvious? The necromancer with them, the person who killed that turian and took his face and shot up that… civilian."

"Okay," Jane started slowly, "Who is the necromancer?"

"Someone close to Nihlus," Shepard answered, "Not an enemy though, there was no sign of struggle on him. Nihlus knew, and figured this person to be friendly."

"Saren."

Both Shepards and the doctor turned to the Captain as the dark skinned man was overcome by a look of realization, "Nihlus Kryik was long time friends with Saren Arterius. Spectres don't make many friends, and while Nihlus was reasonable, he wasn't friendly. Saren, his mentor and colleague, was the only person who could get his guard down."

"A turian necromancer?" Jane asked incredulously, "Maybe I'm wrong here, but I thought none of the other species outside of those from the Homeworld were able to use magic."

Both the Captain and Commander set their eyes on the witcher, who, while happy that despite the fact Anderson might not like his presence was but was willing to tolerate it, wasn't sure what they expected from him, "You'd have to talk to someone much more knowledgeable on magic. What about that Alenko kid? Seems like a smart one."

"Definitely something that we need to follow up on, but if you're so sure it's this Saren, Captain, why would he attack Eden Prime? What did he need with the beacon he wouldn't have access to through his Spectre status?"

"I can't be sure of anything in that regard, but I have an idea of why he would choose overwhelming force on a lightly defended human colony," Anderson told his subordinate, "He hates humans," the Alliance officer looked at the male Shepard in the room with a hard look, "Particularly witchers."

"Hates humans?" the N7 asked, "Why?"

"His brother was in command of the fleet that moved to pacify the colony of Shanxi during the first contact war," David explained, "He was captured, interrogated, and executed by a witcher."

A light came on in Shepard's head, "That's why his name is so familiar!"

The rest of the room looked at him incredulously at his explosive, for him, outburst, "I was wondering why Arterius was such a familiar name! Yeah… I remember that slimy little bird man, hiding his actions behind the thin veil of orders. I don't blame the ground soldiers for the mass killings of civilians, or even the officers on the ships that performed the action of mass murder. They had no power in the system. Desolas was different. He had a choice. That's why his skull is still mounted above my bed."

…

"Well, necromancy isn't something you need to be a Source, or be able to access a Source to do," Kaidan explained to his audience, consisting of a serious Jane Shepard, a curious but ultimately out of the loop Ashley Williams and Kara'Tiil, and one old witcher sitting off to the side and listening absently as he dug into the Alliance MRE in front of him.

"Anyone can perform a summoning ritual, provided they have the tools and the knowledge, all of which is one extranet search away, but it requires an incredible willpower and physical stamina to withstand the power you are summoning, most people are consumed immediately by the forces on the otherside."

The young sorcerer definitely had the attention of his audience, because this MRE was not keeping his. Who put catsup in a box consisting of protein rich toast and genetically modified pears? What was he supposed to put it on? This is ridiculous.

"There are forces, evil, good, benign, and malevolent, that reside in the spaces between worlds, the most well known is the White Frost, which as we all know was defeated by Empress Cirilla in 1282 during the event known as the 'Little Conjunction'."

"Okay Professor," Jane said holding out a hand, "Calm down and tell us how this thing works."

Alenko stumbled over the interruption, flustered at the interruption to his little presentation, not like the classes at Ban Ard, Shepard was sure.

"But there are other, equally powerful forces out there, and when you tap into these, through a summoning ritual, whether you use a six pointed star, five pointed star, an inverted five pointed star or a pentagram, or even the three pointed circle, this force, without conscience, will pour energy through, and if you are knowledgeable in the ways of controlling this power, if you have the right hardware, you can absorb it instead of being disintegrated by it."

Wait… who the hell put caramel candies in this MRE? Who were these for?

"Once you absorb this primordial energy, you can continually tap into it, but whatever you've tapped into, good, bad, other, it twists you. Corrupts you. And it happens quickly."

"So," Ashley asked, surprisingly likely understanding more than the other two women listening, "anyone could theoretically become a very powerful sorcerer? What's rare?"

"What do you mean?" the battle mage asked.

The tall brunette scrunched her eyes as she tried to pontificate as Shepard scrunched his nose as he tried to tell what the pear was actually made out of. Because it wasn't pear.

"There's no shortage of people who want that sort of power," Williams began slowly, "But there aren't a bunch of super powerful sorcerers walking around. So what's rare? The knowledge, or the hardware?"

"Both, to an extreme, extreme, extreme degree. There are a total of four books that accurately detail the process you need to summon this energy, and only a handful of charms, talismans, and seals that will allow you to control it. Even more rare, are the kind of people capable of handling the power they summoned. These primordial forces have a will, even if they don't have a conscience, and it's far more powerful than anything any of us have ever faced."

"Only four books?" Jane asked, "Why were only four ever written?"

Kaidan shook his head, "I'm not sure, we should just thank the gods that there are as few as there are."

Shepard shook his head as he finally dug into the pear, it was surprisingly good, then decided to involve himself in the conversation and the informative, if historically flawed, speech Alenko was giving the group.

"Don't thank the gods," he said through a mouthful of genetically modified pear, "Thank Ashley."

The witcher swallowed before continuing, "There used to be thousands of those books. Fortunately for us all, excepting a few hundred magic users and nonhumans, the Church of the Eternal Fire took to ridding the Homeworld of magic in the thirteenth century. Reduced the number to four. Hm. Damned thorough."

"You know a lot about this stuff?" his grand niece asked, he needed to make sure they had some one on one time later on.

"Witchers know a lot about a lot of things. It's important that we're highly educated in all manner of things," you know, the fruit wasn't actually that bad, but now there was the protein enhanced toast that he was looking at. Not nearly as appetizing, "We don't have a support structure to rely on, no one pities the mutant. Have to take care of yourself."

"Got it so hard, do you?"

"No," he disagreed, "I'll never get sick, I'll live to the ripe old age of more than four hundred years if I don't get killed by some sort of monster, I get to travel the galaxy, and by the time I'm one hundred and fifty I'll be one of the wealthiest citizens in the galaxy, as is the case for ninety six percent of witchers that do live to that age. I've got nothing to complain about, just things I need to be aware of."

Apparently deciding the presentation by the ships resident sorcerer was over, Jane moved over to across the mess table from her great uncle and sat down, "How'd you become a witcher?"

Ah, it was time to ask personal questions apparently. His grand niece was a very curious person, nice to see that the trait ran in the family.

"Same way most people do. Parents died when me and Cerys were young, got sent to an orphanage, and an old witcher came by when I was about six," he took a bite of the toast and discovered what the catsup was for. You had to have something to cover up this taste, even if dipped this in Black Blood it would taste better. Shepard would never complain about the taste of witcher potions if this is what Alliance marines had to put up with.

"Hold on," Kara suddenly asked as she scooted closer to their conversation, "You became a witcher at six years old?"

"No," the Wolf said through a mouthful of the foul meal, "I'm saying I was given the choice of training to become a witcher at the age of six. The reason they ask kids at six is because once you get there," he shook his head, "Ain't no one adopting you. You're too old."

A distant look overcame his viper eyes as he remembered the moment. Old Master Garth had blonde hair at the time, rather than the ashen gray that topped his aged face now. The young boy had thought that Garth was so _tall_ , despite the fact that he wasn't much larger than an average man, but he had projected an air of authority so that to the tiny boy with ribs showing through his skin, he had seemed a giant. The witcher remembered how scared he had been nearly eighty years ago, having been forcibly separated from his sister, trembling in fear before this scary giant with snake eyes and a large sword hanging off his back.

"Why'd you agree?" Jane asked, curiosity evident in the question, though significant apprehension was present in her voice. Like most people, she likely found the entire concept of recruiting children to become witchers a little… distasteful.

"Why not?" he shrugged, "Your grandmother was being pushed into a foster home in the next year, meaning I'd be left all by myself, it was a scary thought for a little boy."

"Do you regret it?" Ashley suddenly asked, joining the conversation for the first time.

"I've thought about that for a long time. I'm… eighty five? Eighty four? Time slips by me," the MRE was still in front of him, but it lay there totally ignored, "You know how many witchers live to be eighty?"

They all shook their heads, "Less than twenty percent. Know how many make it to a hundred? Less than five. Statistically, if not biologically, I'm nearing the end of my days, so I wonder to myself as much as you wonder now, did I make the right choice?"

He looked back at the piece of dense toast and popped another despicable chunk into his mouth, "Does it matter if I did?"

The dry bread substitute slid down his throat uncomfortably before he changed the subject, if not the topic, "What about you? Do you have any regrets joining the N7? My nephew, your father, joined. Never met the kid, but Cerys told me as much as she could about him. Sounded like a good man, a good father, deserved better than what he got."

"He did," Jane agreed in a subdued tone, "But his death isn't the reason I joined the Alliance or became an N7."

"What about your mother? Perhaps another cautionary tale, didn't seem to turn you away."

"Why would it?" the young woman replied as Shepard watched Alenko get an alert on his omnitool, leading to him taking off for the upper levels, likely attending to one of his duties that had come up, "People lay their lives down for our safety, that's what the military is. Or at least what it's supposed to be. So why would her death put me off of service? I'm proud of the fact she died saving colonists from those slavers. She and I rarely saw eye to eye in my teenage years, but I was always proud of her service."

"So did you join the military because you want to honor the memory of your parents?" the Wolf asked, probably seeming a little condescending in his tone, "Or are you doing this because you believe it's expected of you?"

"Why are you asking?"

The witcher gave her that ghost, "Because unlike my decision eighty years ago, you were a fully grown adult when you chose to serve and put your life on the line. I want to know why you made that choice, after the life I've experienced, doing what I've done, I want to know why someone with their mind in the right place would make that decision."

Jane smiled back, "Who says my mind is in the right place?"

A huff of laughter met her comeback, "Well now I know for _sure_ we are related."

The redhead adopted a wryness to her smile, "I never doubted it. You're way too much of an ass not to be."

"Language, baby girl!"

Emerald eyes rolled at viper ones and came back with a quick reply, "Oh sure, play the saint, Uncle Jon."

Shepard's heart, normally beating what most would consider a deathly rate at nineteen beats per minute sitting still, jumped up to an almost normal human rate of forty three beats per minute as soon as he heard his own first name.

Not because it was a surprise to hear his name, despite the fact Cerys, and now Jane, are the only two people in the galaxy that used that particular name. It was because he had heard her use it before, in a nightmare. In fact, before ever having seen a picture as she was now, this exact woman had appeared in it, spoken with the same voice she has now, used the same pretty smile she was using now.

Fortunately, as much as his heartbeat was muted, his ability to facially express emotions were even more so, hiding his sudden discomfort from the young woman in front of him.

"A saint? Perhaps not, more along the lines of High Priest, Inquisitor… Hierarch?"

"Ha! I'm sure the Church of the Eternal fire would _love_ that, a witcher as Hierarch," the N7 replied sarcastically.

The witcher shrugged, "I don't know how much they'd really care anymore. You'd be surprised how libertarian they have become. A lot of people look at the history and just assume, Eternal Fire? You must be burning people in the streets! It's not like that. People like Williams, they don't like me or witchers, but not because they've been taught that witchers are pure evil, it's because they think we're unnatural, which is correct."

"I don't know, there are some politicians that run pretty hard on the values of the Eternal Fire, and they can be pretty hardcore about their beliefs. I remember when a DA in Ard Skellig ran for reelection promised to 'wipe away the deviant behavior of the immoral, unnatural, and nonhuman.'"

Shepard grimaced to the fullest of his ability, "I can't imagine that went well. How would that work anyway? DA's don't have any legislative power."

"It didn't, but it does kind of paint a bad picture of the Church," Jane explained.

"Trust me, more often then not, worshippers of the Eternal Fire are the nicest people I meet, hands down," Wolf said in rebuttal, "There are all sorts of atheists, worshippers of Freya, the old gods of the North, that are awful people, not saying that only there aren't good ones too, but when I get a contract from someone who's title is Father, Brother, Mother, or Sister, it's generally going to be a pleasant experience… The people part, not the monster part. That's never pleasant."

"Why do you think that is?" his niece asked, genuinely curious, displaying another fine quality, open mindedness.

"I think it's just the basic tenants of the faith," Shepard explained as he leaned forward, eyeing a crewmember who sat down at the other end of the mess. He seemed familiar for whatever reason, like the witcher had seen his face recently. At this point, Ashley had already gone down to the weapons station to attend to her interim duties as master at arms of the Normandy and Kara had gone back to the witcher's ship to get some more sleep, "Kindness, togetherness, love, all the basic bullshit of a religion…"

"Bullshit?"

Viper eyes scrunched up as he searched for a better word, "Minutia, better? Good. The difference is the level of enforcement of those tenants. Other faiths, it's just sort of a guideline, in the Eternal Fire, it's a rulebook. Yeah, the organization did horrible things in the past, but the people here and now? Some of the nicest people in the galaxy."

"You know, my mother never liked the idea of having a witcher in the family," Jane confessed, "She thought it was shameful for my grandmother to be in contact with you. For a long time I thought it was a little embarrassing as well. I thought it was basically just like being related to a criminal."

"I'm not surprised, a lot of people feel uncomfortable with the idea of a witcher."

"Well," she started, "I'm glad I got to meet you, and now I know that I don't have to be ashamed that you're a witcher…"

At that moment the door to the medbay opened up and Doctor Chakwas exited, likely being done with her shift as the secondary medical officer entered past her. The dark skinned, silver haired fox walked past the pair sitting at the mess table, running a finger across the witcher's shoulders as she passed and entered the cargo elevator that would take her down to the monster slayer's ship.

"… instead I'm ashamed that he's a chauvinistic womanizer," the soldier finished with an eye roll.

"So, I've got to…"

"Oh, just go!"

…

Snake eyes snapped open in the darkness, quickly adjusting to the low light and focusing on the dim orange pulsing as his omnitool on the desk lit up again. Shepard gently reached over to grab the holographic interface, trying not to disturb the dark skinned limbs wrapped around him.

 _Wolf, get to the Citadel. Got a big job coming up with Asari Republics. Meet me in Human Embassy._

 _Garth of Kaedwen_

Well, that's convenient. But why include him in this big contract with the Asari Republics? Old Master Garth was hardly a spring chicken, but there were plenty of young men out there that would envy him his constitution. The ancient witcher was more than spry, and still hunted monsters to great effect. Why would the old Wolf need his help on this?

He sent a reply, telling Garth that he was already nearly there, with the Normandy, still carrying his personal ship, an estimated two or three hours from reaching the Citadel.

A slender arm snaked across his bare chest and tapped a button on his omnitool, shutting the display off after the message had been sent, "Staring at those things in the dark is bad for your eyes."

Shepard smirked at the doctor as she stretched her shapely form, rubbing her body against his, then immediately shuddering at the feeling.

"Melitile preserve me, I'm still not used to that!" Karin exclaimed as the Wolf raked his eyes over her naked form, his viper eyes able to pick out the goosebumps and hair raising along her skin, "I just, can't believe that you… tickle!"

That was something no one ever expected when they first had skin on skin contact with a witcher. Shepard wasn't sure what it was, but for whatever reason, skin contact with one of the specialized warrior monks was akin to touching a low voltage electric field, causing a tingling sensation that varied from witcher to witcher. For some it was akin to actual electric shock, others, it was more like the light touch of a feather tip. For Shepard, Aria T'Loak had compared it to the tingling one would get from a line of Red Sand, whereas Chakwas had compared it to feeling of an electric muscle relaxer, but both those women, and the many others, had all claimed it to be exceedingly pleasant. Which was good, Shepard figured.

"Well maybe we should work on your capacity for tolerance," he rasped in her ear as he pulled himself over her, pressing his short cropped beard into her neck, tickling the sensitive skin there with both his hair and his unnatural electric field, "We could go for a series of small doses… or one big shock to your system…"

Two slender legs wrapped around his midsection as the doctor pushed his head down onto her breasts, firm despite her forty some years. Shepard was vaguely aware of her reaching over to her own omnitool as he enjoyed the soft globes of flesh.

"My shift starts in an hour," their eyes met as she informed him of her impending engagement.

"Hop in the shower, and we'll have enough time."

Karin smiled as Wolf rolled off of her and hopped off the bed, shaking her shapely rear end as she sauntered over to the corner shower just barely large enough to house one person. The doctor barely got the water turned on and hot before she found herself pressed up against the wall of the shower stall by a much larger frame.

"Unless you beg me to keep you in here…" he growled as he shut the glass door behind him, trapping the two in the cramped stall where they would certainly do their best to use the space efficiently.

…

Shepard had a few hours to kill before Garth arrived on the Citadel, according to the old witcher's last message, and as a result was walking through the market on Zakera Ward. The last month or so had been good for his bank account, though it would have been much nicer if the geth hadn't decided to invade Eden Prime and he had been able to cash in on the leshen.

Still, nearly a quarter of a million credits added to his spending account was significant, and using that money to add lab equipment was the reason he and Kara'Tiil were walking through the metal deck plating that made up the Citadel arm.

"Okay, we have the new DNA decoder, sample centrifuge, chemicals…" Kara read off the list on her omnitool as she walked at a brisk pace through the crowds, something made much easier by the space afforded to the witcher by the various aliens, "I think all we need to get is more seeds for your little arboretum."

"Sounds about right, first things though, let's stop at this place up ahead."

The quarian looked up at the sign hanging above the doorway, "A gun store? You have dozens of firearms! Why would you need another one?"

"I don't" Wolf replied to the young biologist's confusion.

The witcher entered the store, finding a single turian sitting behind the counter polishing the slug razor pulled from a Predator pistol.

"Tyrannus."

"Wolf! Spirits, mutant, what took you so long! You said you'd be here by midday!"

The middle aged turian with red colony markings on his face set down the slug razor an moved on the electric rail, using a small brush to clean the coils of carburization from the intense heat produced by firing multiple shots in a short amount of time.

"Haggling with a volus," Shepard replied shortly.

The grey plated bird man nodded slowly, "Enough to set anyone's schedule back, even if they cleared their whole day! This the girl?"

Viper eyes focused on the purple clad quarian, "She is."

The turian put the electromagnetic rail down and walked around the counter, closing in on the very confused Pilgrim, "Spread your arms out, girl, hands straight, shoulders back."

"Excuse me?"

"Kara," Wolf grabbed the young woman's attention, "Do what he says, trust me."

The quarian spread her arms out wide, her recently put back together shoulder giving her some obvious discomfort, though she was able to do it, and the gunsmith immediately pulled out a small tape measure, putting one end on her left hand and the other on her right.

"One sixty seven," Tyrannus mumbled to himself, "Stand up straight, locked knees, good."

The tape turned vertical, "One seventy two… dominant hand?"

"Left…"

"Ah, as those humans say, a southpaw! I need to test your shoulder strength, but from what Wolf here told me, you recently broke your dominant hand shoulder, so I'll have to make do with your right shoulder, stagger your feet, right foot forward, back straight."

No sooner had the quarian done so than Tyrannus punched her in the shoulder, eliciting a small yip from the young woman, but otherwise keeping her balance and composure.

"Good, good! A strong young lady!" the middle aged turian turned to the witcher, "Give me ten minutes."

As the tall alien left the room, the short alien turned to the mutant, "Shepard, why was he doing that?"

"Taking your measurements, Tyrannus is a legendary gunsmith. Spectre's pay an arm and a leg for his sidearms, and their own mothers for his rifles. Whenever I'm in a pinch, need a gun fixed and I don't have the materials, I come to him. Only ever ordered one custom weapon from him before though, and not even a gun. It's that black compound bow in my sleeping quarters."

"Why was a legendary gunsmith taking my measurements?"

Shepard rolled his eyes, "Come on Kara, you're naïve, not stupid. I got a good look at what you're capable of, and what you need work on. You couldn't handle the recoil of that Tempest, but the Widow, a rifle longer than you are tall, and only twenty pounds lighter than yourself, and you hit a target a mile away."

"I'm not a soldier! You're not expecting me to be doing lots of fighting are you?"

"I expect, you will find yourself in situations, especially if you stick around me like you say you will, that you will need to fire a rifle. You may not be a soldier, but you will be a killer if you want to survive these missions."

The quarian seemed very off put by the statement, causing Shepard to sigh to himself before he leaned in, "Look, I will never put you in a situation where you will have to kill if I can help it, but I can't always help it. There's a certain sacrifice of innocence that's required when you hunt the creatures I do. They're merciless, fearless, more clever than you would think is possible. I'm not perfect, at some point, I'm going to need your help."

After a long moment, the biologist nodded, just as Tyrannus came out from the back room, a beautiful rifle in his hands.

"Here we are, four millimeter barrel, sixty four centimeters from butt to fore grip, interchangeable ammunition modifiers, folding factor of thirty four percent, scope from four times to twenty four times zoom, maximum effective range would be around four miles for an expert in a one G gravitational environment assuming standard atmospheric density, and finally, around four point six kilos."

"Masterful, Tyrannus," Shepard claimed as he held the rifle in his hands. The weapon was absolutely gorgeous, with matt purple exterior matching Kara's suit color, a sleek predatory design, and a definite weight belying the raw power inside the weapon, "what do I owe you?"

"Please," the middle aged turian claimed with a wave of his hand, "I still have contacts in the Hierarchy, I heard about what you did on Menae. This gun is free if it's keeping a hero of the Hierarchy safe."

"Oh yeah, been a few years that," Wolf nodded as he remembered the mission. It really spoke to the rarity of his visits that a two year old contract was the last an old 'friend' had heard of him, "I had never seen bruxae take on turian shapes before. Hell, I'd never thought of turian females as shapely before!"

"Ugly and Strong! That's a good old turian woman for you!"

"If true, it'll make identifying bruxae all the more easy in the future, my thanks Tyrannus."

The middle aged gunsmith waved a dismissal as the witcher and the quarian left the shop.

Shepard folded the rifle in his grip, the barrel sliding into the body as the rifle itself seemed to swell to accept the barrel and the stock into itself as the two collapsed inwards. The deep purple vermillion plating expanded over the scope, protecting the carefully calibrated magnifier, and the trigger handle flipped over and disappeared into the folds of the weapon. All in all, Wolf would have to say that Tyrannus was correct, it was about thirty eight percent smaller.

A quick slap on the back attached the rifle to the Pilgrim, surprising Kara who had appeared deep in thought.

"Why do you think I'll be good with a sniper rifle?"

"It's not a sniper rifle, it's a marksman rifle. Big difference in application and adaptability. Gun on your back can be fired as fast as you can pull the trigger until it overheats, and do so without completely ripping itself and its shooter to pieces."

"That's not an answer."

A huff of laughter escaped his lips as they descended another level, parting the crowds like a leper, though with a little less outright disgust and a lot more pointed casual stares, "Got steady hands, you shot that destroyer from a mile away after all."

"That rifle aims itself, and you know it!"

"Well how about you don't look this gift horse in the mouth, and work on learning how to use it?"

The arboretum was up ahead, the smell of blooming flowers, ripe fruit, and fresh vegetables flooding the witcher's nose, though he strongly suspected that even with her suit's advanced olfactory sensors, they were still too far for Kara to sense the plants pheromones.

"What's a gift horse, and why are people staring at its mouth?"

"It's a saying, means don't look to deep into a –"

"Shepard?"

Another smell was intermingling with the scent of flowers and budding vegetation. It was shocking, stimulating, unnatural. It smelled like a monster.

"Cripes! A vatt'ghern?" a she-elf exclaimed from behind the desk as the witcher dashed into the shop ahead of the quarian, "How da fook am I to keep a stock with all you bloody creatures clearing me oot?"

Well the she-elf was certainly something else. Probably grew up nestled deep inside a dwarven community, but she wasn't what he was here for. The pollen in the air would mask the scent to any other sentient creature in the galaxy, but a witcher's nose was not so easily fooled.

The scent was earthy, like an ogroid, and primal, like an elemental. There was even a crackling to the smell, as though it were filled with energy, the same way a wraith might smell, or even a foglet's illusions…

A rustle caught his eyes in the back. A truly massive shape loomed out of the vegetation, it's outline broken up by the flower petals, but such a simple camouflage technique would hardly throw off such an experienced-

"Jared?"

The seven foot tall witcher from the School of the Bear turned at the sound of his name, "Shepard! Thought I caught your scent around here."

Jared of the Dragon Mountains lived up to his namesake. Both the Bear, and the Mountains. Seven feet tall barefoot, three hundred and fifty seven pounds bone dry, arms as thick as tree trunks, legs as great around as mountain bases, a visage filled with scars like a rock face all covered by the great curly brown beard.

"There a contract on the Citadel I wasn't aware of?"

"Might be," the deep rumbling coming from Mount Jared replied, "Your master, Garth, sent my master a message a few days ago, telling him to send his best witcher for a contract with the Asari Republics."

"I got the same message," Shepard informed his colleague, "Wonder why he'd call for two witchers?"

"Don't know, mysteries abound whenever I'm around you Wolves…" viper eyes flitted past the smaller mutant, "Case in point. Who's this?"

Kara was standing behind the Wolf, staring up in awe at the Bear, quite possibly having never seen a human, or two legged alien, as tall as Jared. Krogan were bigger, but their humps rarely reached seven feet, never mind their heads.

"Kara'Tiil nar Moreh, Pilgrim. She's a xenobiologist, or at least wants to be one. Asked to tag along, she figured it'd be good training," the smaller witcher shrugged, "She's good with a scalpel and good with her head… for the most part."

"Jared of the Dragon Mountains," the giant rumbled before pointing at Shepard, "I'm this one's better looking colleague."

"Were I as ugly as you, I'd worry for every reflective surface nearby. Doubtless my gaze would have ruptured hulls!"

"Well it's certainly not helping my constitution, should I have to look upon you for another minute, I fear I may shower these plants with my stomach's contents!"

"No one wants to see your stomach's contents, certainly. I'd hate to see what regurgitated nekker dung looks like."

"Keelah…"

The verbal battle was interrupted by the quarian who had finally managed to say something, finally shaking free her shock at the sight of the giant witcher. Then, it seemed she managed to gather quite a bit of courage as she continued, "Can I stick you with a needle?"

Perhaps her mind hadn't caught up to her courage yet.

Before Jared could adamantly deny her proposed perforation, both witcher's omnitools lit up, an alarm blaring on the holographic interface.

"Well, well, well," the Bear growled, "Looks like this mystery is about to be resolved. Head to the Embassy together?"

"Deal, Kara, get back to the ship to receive the equipment we ordered. When I'm done at the Embassy I'll call you and let you know our next move."

 **Alright guys, Saren's trial, and exactly what the heck's going on with that Asari colony is coming up next, unless this story dies. Which is entirely possible.**

 **Don't worry, I won't rip this story off the site, if it dies I'll just leave it hanging.**

 **Also don't worry, Femshep and Co haven't even started Saren's first trial, so they haven't gathered up Vakarian, or Wrex, or Tali.**


	8. Chapter 8

**Well… I'd say that response was overwhelming. I know it came off as a little extortionist, that wasn't what was intended. I know not everyone is going to comment on every chapter, that's not what I want either. I was a little curious that my first chapter had 50 reviews, and the second had 20, and then I had a little more then 10 for each chapter from then on, so I checked the viewership and saw a sharp drop. I didn't know if that was because my quality had dropped significantly, or if the story wasn't as interesting as I thought it was.**

 **I would have still written this story regardless, I write a lot of things, but I just wouldn't have published it, the same way I immediately delete a lot of the short stories I write on my computer, mostly because those are schizophrenic ramblings that are highly inappropriate to post on any public forum.**

 **Okay, groveling over, you can go back to your typical reading habits. I would still appreciate reviews, but if they fall off, I won't hit the abandon button. I'll post for as long as this story holds my interest.**

"Miss Goyle, if you would please prepare a statement for the Council," Regis ordered his understudy as he contemplated the three witnesses of Horizon and the Captain of the Normandy standing before him, "Inform them of our pending investigation into the events of the incident on Eden Prime, make sure both they, and C-Sec are aware that we will be pursuing possible leads on persons of interest here on the Citadel. We anticipate their cooperation within the limits of the laws and litigations of Citadel Law. No details on who, where, or what, understood?"

The tan skinned she-elf furiously rapped away at a pad as she took notes on his request. The woman was truly a professional, and whenever it was time for the higher vampire to step down, probably another thirty years considering his current 'age' and the way human life spans have been increasing lately, the Alliance was in good hands when it came to Anita Goyle. Perhaps they'd even have a Council Seat by then. Wouldn't that be exciting?

"Refer to them by name rather than honorifics? It would send the message that we're very serious and more than a little disappointed in their own lack of action on this topic."

"Always tell the truth," the Ambassador replied simply, "Particularly when it suits you!"

The blonde smirked at that before standing, "Alright, I'll get this started, I'll put it on the public diplomatic board, so if the Council wants to refuse, they'll have to show the entire galaxy that they don't care about a non-Council race being invaded."

Yes she was good, if she were to be elected to the Alliance's Council chair, then Regis would utter a prayer unto the manufactured deities of the various mortal races for the spirit and soul of the other three.

"So we are going to pursue Saren?"

Ah yes, their Spectre candidate. She was surprisingly more curious than Regis would have thought. He had hoped for more than the typical, follow orders, never question authority, jarhead marine, and he had gotten it, but she would have to learn to take more charge when faced with uncertainty.

Well, no time like the present to hone such skills.

"Yes, you are, Commander Shepard," the vampire told the N7, "I've gone over the evidence collected, the mission statements, and the Witcher Shepard's testimony, and I absolutely believe that we know absolutely nothing about what happened there."

The redhead seemed confused and more than a little offended at the statement, "Then why bother going after Saren? If we don't know anything, then we can't do anything."

This might take some work... Lateral thinking was crucial for leadership roles in extreme and isolated situations, but was also not something taught in typical military schooling, regardless of species. Lateral thinking was dangerous for frontline commanders working within an established hierarchy in the midst of a large battle. It could throw the entire strategy off, therefore it was best to snip the problem before it could manifest by simply not teaching that line of thinking.

Makes for excellent soldiers, and poor Spectres.

"Because the idea of Saren is the only ray of light we have in this bleak cavern of hopelessness," Regis explained, using heated tones to get his point through to the young woman, "Because if we do nothing… then our entire people has no reason even existing in this galaxy. So, you go chase down any information on Saren. If you are going to be the Alliance's first Spectre, you're going to be in situations where all you have is a hunch, and zero evidence, and it will be your job to chase down that hunch."

The door to Regis's office swung open, the vampire not even bothering to look, for he knew exactly who it was, "If you're trying to find something on Saren, ask an agent of the Shadow Broker. When last I spoke with one, they were looking into the whereabouts of him, apparently he and the Broker are not on friendly terms at the moment."

The creature of the night stood upright, tugging on his white suit, ridding the wrinkles and creases from the satin cloth, "Thank you for the tip, Master Garth, what might the price for that be?"

The dry, noble voice replied with a drop of snide sarcasm, "I'll take a sense of deep patriotism and fulfilled duty. Is this a bad time?"

"Nonsense, I believe these three were just on their way to follow your advice. Captain Anderson, I do require your absence from this investigation. This is nothing personal, but any evidence gained by _you_ against Saren is immediately going to come under doubt."

The captain didn't seem entirely convinced by the vampire's iron clad logic, but he nodded his assent anyway. Being the man of duty and responsibility that he was, it was even all but guaranteed that he would follow through with the ambassador's order.

The four military members started to walk out, none of them looking entirely pleased with the Ambassador, though he failed to understand why they might be as upset as they were. The hand they had been dealt was awful, and they couldn't just dump all the responsibilities off on someone else. By the human's own hell, he had even gotten them what was essentially diplomatic immunity for the duration of their investigation.

The foursome was nearly out when two more witchers entered, the gargantuan monster slayer rumbling a quick 'excuse me', and the simply large one stopping at the sight of redheaded N7 operative.

"Something wrong?" the dark haired witcher asked the Spectre candidate, Regis watching the exchange out of the corner of his eye with covered curiosity.

"We're chasing damned fairytales," Jane whispered, "I've got to find a Shadow Broker agent and see if he can't dig up some dirt on the Big Bad Wolf."

The young woman was about shoulder her way past the mutant, but the Wolf put his hand on her arm, halting her, "Barla Von, Volus merchant on the Presidium, tell him I sent you and he'll tell you everything you need to know."

"Is there anyone you don't know?"

"Saw a couple of batarians at a party last week, didn't get the chance to talk to them," the dark haired witcher winked down at the young woman, "Go get 'em, baby girl."

Interesting, clearly the two were far closer than simply two people who had fought on the same battlefield.

"Know her?" the giant Bear asked as the door shut behind the N7.

"Only recently, but I've known of her for quite some time," the dark haired Wolf responded, "Grand niece."

Ah! Of course, it was hard to see past the hair color and the eyes, but there were quite a few physical similarities between the two, particularly in the cheekbones and the nose. Regis recalled one particular facet of life he had explored in the fifteenth century, genealogy. The higher vampire had spent a full one hundred years following fifteen different families from each significantly separate gene pool in the world, totally around one hundred and five families at the beginning, and nearly a thousand by the end. The tome he had gathered his notes in had been so large that a human assistant he had at the time struggled to pick it up, causing the vampire to split it into two separate encyclopedias. It had been that work, dumped on the desk of an Oxenfurt professor's desk, that had been the basis of modern genetics, something for which Regis was astoundingly proud and humbled by. It was also a little concerning that he hadn't been able to recall his own work to immediately identify the shared physical traits and put both the N7 and the witcher in the same relative gene pool.

Oh well, must just be getting old and wistful.

"Master Garth, I thank you for coming," the ambassador started, reaching a hand out to the old witcher, the rough faced, grey haired, monster hunter taking it, giving the vampire the mild tingle associated with skin to skin contact with a witcher, a fascinating phenomena which was discovered by a biologist working with the School of the Viper on a limited contract, to be an unintentional side effect of the unnatural process through which a witcher might gain the ability to access the Source of magical power present within the fabric of the universe, having spread out from the moment of the First Conjunction, and only spreading further and becoming more potent as more Alliance Sorcerers and Sorceresses drew upon the Source. If Regis recalled correctly, the specific cause was an overpowered nervous system that actually caused the…

"We have two more on their way, but I would like to know when we might meet with our contact for the contract."

Right, he should probably pay attention instead of rambling. Regis actually recalled a certain dwarven scholar that had looked into the tendency towards rambling as age goes up. If memory served correctly, he had… Wait, no dammit!

"As you've no doubt picked up, there are some serious matters afoot currently, so I may not be present for the entire exchange, though I will certainly endeavor to help you with your negotiations. Matriarch Aethyta has recently arrived on the Citadel, she should be meeting the five of you in a half hour at the meeting room a floor below us on the balcony."

The huge Bear chose to lean against the wall, his stance seeming uninterested and bored, though the vampire's far superior senses could detect an alert being, cautiously watching both him, and the room, looking for clues, evidence of what had transpired. So the Bear was a curious one.

"I know Master Garth here of course, an consummate professional with whom I've had the pleasure of working with before, on behalf of the Alliance of course, but the two of you are new to me, and I would like to know the gentlemen whom I have personally recommended to a foreign government. I am Emiel Regis, Human Systems Alliance Ambassador to the Citadel and the galaxy at large. Who might you be my friendly giant?"

"Jared, Bear."

The vampire smirked slyly, making sure all could see it as he was about to have some fun with the withdrawn fellow, "Surely you could do better than that? Perhaps we'll revert back to an exercise learned by all when they are young, meeting new people. Surely you're familiar with it? I tell you my name, and an interesting fact about myself, for instance, I am an avid entomologist, I adore insects, arachnids, and other exoskeletal creatures. Now, as for yourself?"

The mountain of a man sighed, sounding more like a landslide than an expression of frustration and exhaustion, and one that was followed by two more sighs in the room.

The day may not be going to plan, but Regis wasn't going to let that stop him from being insufferable.

…

Kara walked through the Citadel, on the way back from the arboretum, on her second trip, mind, watching with curiosity the C-Sec officers that somehow didn't seem to see her, almost as though she were invisible. That was to be expected when she was accompanying Shepard, the witcher seemed to avert gazes wherever he went, as though people were terrified of acknowledging his very existence, but on her own? Law enforcement should have been following a lone quarian Pilgrim from the very moment she stepped off their ship. It was almost as if the three C-Sec officers Shepard had hypnotized had spread their hypnosis of ignoring Kara to the rest of the agency.

Regardless, it was very nice to be left alone, and even be allowed to purchase something, and carry her purchase without harassment. In fact it was so nice, she figured she might as well take some credits she had earned on her own, and purchase something for herself, rather than just buy the seeds her witcher had forgotten earlier and head back.

The question was _what_ to buy. Two months ago and she would have bought some food and not thought twice, now she was well fed without spending a single credit of her own. She could have bought something to help in her studies of Post Conjunction genetics, but she had literally just done that hours ago, all on her caretaker's credit.

Keelah, she was kind of a parasite…

A flash of purple caught her eye through the crowds, another quarian, in a purple realk no less, signifying, if nothing else, that this particular Pilgrim had a similar sense of style. It was also a strong indicator that the quarian in question was likely from the same family line as her own, though fashion style had more recently gone away from such traditional routes, more out of necessity and the difficulty for the Fleet to get their hands on certain colors than any actual choice.

Curiosity peaked, Kara decided to follow the brief flash of purple, hoping to catch up to her fellow migrant and speak to them, see who they were, what they might be doing, even perhaps lend them a helping hand. Pay the witcher's kindness forward as it were, though if she understood the concept properly it was supposed to be done a little more randomly. Oh well, it was a human custom anyway.

The young biologist weaved through a group of turians and caught sight of the quarian again, clearly painting her fellow Pilgrim as a fellow woman. She was a little shorter than Kara, a little thinner as well, but nar'Moreh was a little big for a quarian female, so that was to be expected. The thing that was curious, was how incredibly tense the other migrant was. It was in her shoulders, her gait, and the way the shotgun on her lower back was loosely kept there, ready to be drawn at a moment's notice.

Kara, like all quarians, was an expert at reading body language, especially in her fellow quarians, and it was painfully obvious to her that the Pilgrim ahead of her was in danger, putting into her head the idea that she needed to catch up to here and determine what was wrong. Fortunately for both of them, a another idea quashed it, one put into her head by observing Shepard on his hunts.

There was one incident, on an independent mining colony where they had purchased a cyclops on the black market for use as hard labor where mining equipment couldn't reach. The titanic ogroid had quickly destroyed the freelancer's means of control and slaughtered its fellow miners wholesale, or so was the report when they had arrived.

When the witcher had moved into the caverns, Kara watching his feed with captivated interest, both in her hopes to try and identify possible personality traits and behaviors that could only be discerned through live study and could be attributed to physical traits, and to actually see her caretaker in action, the hunter had encountered something strange. Pleas for help echoed through the cavernous tunnels, large enough to hide a dozen of the brutish ogres, dozens of cries urging anyone out there to come and free them, and to do so quickly while the cyclops was missing.

If Kara'Tiil had been there, she would have rushed to their aid, and likely wound up in the dinner stew of beast, though she'd at least have the revenge of giving the creature mild anaphylactic shock. Shepard had paused, then moved cautiously where the quarian would have run, believing the voices to be telling truths they realistically could not have known. It was that reason that the cyclops, waiting in ambush, had been struck down before even knowing that the witcher was there.

It was that lesson learned that slowed the biologist's steps and cast her eyes about the corridor, her gaze raking across groups of humans, turians, asari… and two salarians who had eyes for no one but the Pilgrim ahead of them. If she had caught up with her fellow migrant, undoubtedly Kara would have wound up in their sights as well, and been just as unaware of who the pursuers were as the quarian she'd likely die with.

Now she had an advantage… unfortunately she wasn't entirely sure how to take advantage of it. She could tail the salarians, wait till they made their move and kill them, but then she ran the risk of them noticing her. She could run up to the Pilgrim, quietly warn her, and try and come up with a plan to take the two amphibians on, but she wasn't a soldier, as she had told the witcher plenty of times when he had bought her the rifle still attached to her back.

But… neither was Shepard. Shepard was a hunter, he stalked his prey, not by following them, but by anticipating them, by learning things from the available evidence, and finding them where they will be, like the werewolf on Elysium. The human monster slayer had gone through the crime scene, picking every little piece of the area apart, and learned more than she thought possible from dried up blood stains and week old tracks. If she could be astute like Shepard, perhaps there was more she could…

Well that didn't take long. The salarians were following the quarian, not pursuing. They weren't gaining ground, which means they weren't going to be the ones to ambush her, they were there to cut off an escape and herd the migrant into a specific spot. That meant, that if Kara was careful, and if she could go unnoticed and track their movements, she could logically work out their destination. Just like Shepard would do…

Keelah, she wished he were here.

…

Aethyta really wished she were anywhere else but here. But when the Council of Matriarch's gives you an opportunity to get back into the game, you took it. Anything to get out of that bar on Illium, even though there was a one thousand percent chance they were going to shove her right back in there once this whole debacle was over.

Damned old crones would never change. Sometimes the matriarch thought that a lifespan of a thousand years was a curse on the asari people. They were stuck in a quagmire of stagnation as upstart races like humans raced past them. She had brought this all up before, to the Council of Matriarchs, to her own bond mate Benezia, but they all said the same thing, that there have always been races on the horizon before, but the Asari Republics has always fended them off, but that wasn't true. They weren't fended off by significant scientific development and research, or an advanced and entrenched military that would be impossible to fight against. The Republics were still at the top of the galactic food chain because they had managed to get the other species addicted to the asari economy.

Humans seemed to smell that trap a lightyear off, though considering their history that should be no surprise. Half a dozen different cultures and empires had gone through their homeworld trying to conquer it, the humans, elves, and dwarves were well versed in the psychological and economical tactics of imperialists. Truth of the matter was, the Alliance was literally the only power in the galaxy truly capable of standing on their own, and the first one to join the Citadel that had not been on the verge of collapse.

The asari had depended on the salarians for science, and the turians for military might for so long, that they no longer had the infrastructure in place to prop themselves up should they lose their allies.

The salarians might have a reputation as the most intelligent species in the galaxy, but when they had joined the asari among the intelligent species roaming the galaxy, they were near destruction themselves, with over a thousand males to one female. Ever since then, their dependency on the intergalactic community had expanded from taking care of sexually frustrated males to providing a labor force the salarian people had long since abandoned and made clear they would not take up again.

The turians were just as lucky to stumble across the Krogan Rebellions as the asari and salarians were lucky they did. Their economy was in shambles without a war to drive it, and ever since then they've become totally dependent on huge subsidies from the Republic to maintain the Hierarchy's fleets and keep their soldiers fed.

But the Alliance? They showed up and had it all figured out. Not completely of course, but they didn't need the galactic community to fix their problems for them, because they had the three basic pillars of a society down perfectly. Stable and growing economy? Check. Powerful military capable of defending their people? Check. A standard set of morals upon which their society could reasonably stand upon? Well that one had a more interesting answer due to significant culture variations amongst not only the humans and the Elder races, but between humans of slightly different hair color, but the short answer was yes.

Hell, the only thing that seemed to be able to stop the Alliance was their own competitive nature with the batarians as they over extended their colonization into the Traverse and the Verge, though even now they were catching up to their own haste. It was no wonder why the Council of Matriarch's agreed to the governess's plan to capture and study these 'monsters' and see if they could get something from them. They knew it, just as Aethyta had been saying for centuries, the Citadel was in danger of becoming outdated, and as a result the Republics would lose the crutch they've been leaning on for the past fifteen thousand years.

Unfortunately, they _didn't_ know how to properly handle these beasts, so their search for an advantage was ill spent looking at magical monsters, especially since they were now in an embarrassing situation where they would lose an entire garden world if they didn't reach out for the Alliance's help. In one stroke they managed to humiliate themselves, and their entire species before a race of upstarts that hadn't even been able to leave their own atmosphere for more than three centuries.

Creatures they had tamed and conquered a long time ago with bows and spears and clubs, her people couldn't handle with guns, artillery, and biotics.

"Ma'am, we're approaching the Alliance embassy," one of her escorts told her.

Goddess even the vaunted Asari Commandoes were being infiltrated by humans… Though Aethyta supposed Cora Harper was a good enough girl, but what was the point of this cultural exchange? To give away their standard operating procedures, guerilla tactics, and tactical targets?

"Yeah, yeah, let's get this over with," the disgraced matriarch said wearily, the seven strong group of commandoes, led by Captain Nisira, led the way to the embassy, parting the crowd of civilians milling around and coming up to a desk where a single human male sat at a computer terminal.

The asari group didn't even have to say a word before the man stood up, and pointed to the back, "Staircase on the right, go up two levels, then down the hall, the door at the end. Ambassador Regis is already waiting for you with the experts."

Nisira promptly thanked the man and led the way, Aethyta following as the commandoes had requested, staying within their protective bubble at all times, as though such things were necessary on the Presidium, particularly inside one of the largest and most well protected embassies on the Citadel. So affluent were the humans, that they're complex had swallowed the embassies of the elcor and volus right whole.

"Hey Cora," a commando in her maiden years whispered behind the matriarch, "Who counts as an expert on monsters?"

The blonde human responded with a normal tone of voice, rightly concluding that whispering was fooling no one, "A witcher."

"You mean those…" the maiden's voice started loud but hushed, Aethyta could practically feel her whip her head around wildly, " _those mutants_?"

"Um, yes? Though I'd be a little more discreet when actually in the room with one."

The maiden was whispering again, "I'll be quiet!"

"They're hearing is eight times more sensitive than yours, so I'd recommend being silent, myself."

That was an interesting thing. Aethyta had heard of witchers, but only seen one on the local corporate news channel on Illium. A human male with dark skin and snake eyes, wearing forest green armor with blood red spikes, and sporting a screeching bird's head medallion around his neck. Apparently that particular witcher had been hired by one of the major corporations in her district and all employees and customers were to give him ample space to do his work, and managers were to help him if he needed it.

The disgraced asari wasn't entirely sure what to make of the mutated monster slayers, on one hand they were abominations of nature. That was empirical fact. On the other hand, they were instrumental in the survival of remote colonies who couldn't be afforded the same level of protection other's had, either from monsters, the very things witchers were designed to hunt and kill, or slavers, monsters in every sense but the most literal and physical. They were paid handsomely for their work, for sure, but reports Aethyta's matriarch status still allowed her access to had painted their actions in a humanitarian light. As though these witchers did what they did because they felt it was the right thing to do, and that their actions were nothing but beneficial to society as a whole.

But that was nonsense, no group of people, even a group of entirely male humans all raised under the same education and physical training program, were entirely homogeneous, or entirely beneficial. There were bad witchers out there, there had to be, whether they were bad at being monster slayers, or bad at being a productive member of society.

Ultimately, she could reserve judgement until she actually met one. Perhaps she would get the opportunity right now as Captain Nisira walked up to the door at the end of the hall, presumably the room the man at the bottom floor sent them to, and hit the holographic display, causing the door to slide apart and reveal…

Goddess that was a large creature.

The human male, if it was indeed human and not actually a giant krogan wearing a human suit, was at the far end of the room, leaning on the handrail of the balcony, and still managed to visually take up the entire doorframe with his massive frame, decked in muddy brown armor with dark green stripes running across it at a diagonal.

This giant was not alone, Aethyta noted as she entered the room. In one corner, there were two men who had been speaking, but were now watching the company of asari with snake like eyes. One was an average human height, with grey hair falling to his neck and oddly sculpted facial hair above his upper lip, and the other one was taller, nearly average turian height, with dark black hair cut close all around his head and his chin. Both wore black armor with silver studs, though the grey haired one's armor was clearly lighter, and sported smaller plating.

Another witcher, for that is who these people were, without a doubt, was twirling a knife in his hands, his viper eyes focused on the spinning steel rather than the party of blue skinned women. The man was dark skinned, dark haired, and lightly armored in golden brown plates that were clearly thinner than the other witcher's armor in the room, with cloth wrapping around his neck and shoulders of all different shades.

Finally, there was one last witcher in the room, standing next to a comparatively normal human male. This one was wearing the same green armor the witcher on Illium had been, forest green and red spikes sticking out from the shoulders, contrasting with his bronzed skin framed by an immaculately sculpted head of hair.

"Ah!" the only actual human man in the room said with a clap of his hands, "I see you've finally arrived, I apologize in advance, for I might be required to leave at some point, though fear not, for Master Garth of the School of the Wolf is more than qualified to lead these talks on behalf of himself and his compatriots."

The disgraced matriarch took in the human in the white suit, clearly Ambassador Emiel Regis of the Alliance, and smiled. She'd seen people like this before, though this particular human might be the most exceptional example she recalled meeting. Handsome, charismatic, eloquent, insufferable. The poor guy probably had to beat maidens and matrons off with a stick.

"But first I imagine some introductions are in order," the ambassador continued, walking around the holotable at the center of the room and gesturing to the two black armored witchers, "The two exceptional men in the black armor are Master Garth and Shepard of Undviik, the young man with the knife is Bayak of Lyria, the gentleman leaning on the bannister is Jared of the Dragon Mountains, the man with the charming smile is Antoine of Gulet, and I am Ambassador Emiel Regis."

None of the witchers seemed particularly impressed with their flowery introduction, but it wasn't for them, as Aethyta had already lost the emotional support of every commando apart from Nirisa, as the younger asari were looking at the dangerous snake eyed humans in every corner of the room with open fascination and curiosity.

She sighed, "Matriarch Aethyta," she pointed at herself first before pointing to Nirisa, "Captain Nirisa," her hand swept to the typically disciplined, but thoroughly flustered commandoes, "Talein's Daughters."

Regis nodded, his midnight black eyes and subtle smile utterly dominating the room. There was no point in fighting for control of this meeting, at least not as long as he was here. Aethyta had over a thousand years of interpersonal experience to call upon, and nearly four centuries of political experience, she was more than capable of recognizing when she was outmatched. The matriarch sighed as she realized that the man probably had that young girl Tevos wrapped around his little finger when it came to advancing the political machinations of the Alliance.

"Onto the business at hand," the ancient asari said simply. She wasn't a diplomat, and that wasn't what the Council of Matriarch's wanted from her anyway, "This is Elutania."

At the transfer of information from the optical disk she held out, the holotable sprang up with an image of a planet, half purple seas, the other half light blue ground with blotches of light where there were cities, a few patches of brown sand, small stripes of white where there were snowy mountains, and large golden clouds hanging high in the atmosphere.

"It's a colony world reasonably deep in asari space, home to five billion people, the majority of which are asari though there is a not insignificant population of turians, salarians, and krogans."

The witcher in the golden brown armor, Bayak, suddenly stopped twirling his knife, "I'm gonna go ahead and guess it aint' home to five billion people anymore."

Nirisa was glaring daggers at the dark skinned witcher, either for interrupting, or for so casually assuming the death of millions, it didn't matter. Bayak was correct.

"No, no it's not," another picture appeared over the holotable, this one of what she had been informed was called a chort that was currently in the middle of ransacking a space port, killing everyone it saw, destroying entire wings of the structure, and wreaking havoc throughout, "because of these things."

"Chorts?" the grey one, Garth, asked as he sidled up to the table.

"Not just these things," the image changed again, bringing gasps out of the asari commandoes of the room, though the witchers and Regis were entirely unphased by the scraps of flesh strewn across the mainstreet of a rural town on Elutania, blood framing the footprints of dozens of creatures that had feasted on the flesh there. There, in the middle of the street, a hunched, humanoid creature on all fours, stuffed blue tinted intestines into its mouth.

Again it changed, a great winged beast, spikes running up and down its scaly back, with a heavy cleaver resting at the end of its tail. Its great fanged maw opened wide as it let out a triumphant roar, the shuttle it stood atop cracked open, the bodies of innocents hanging out.

Another shift in the image, this time showing a time lapse on footage taken from a lost commando unit. The first frame was of an asari, beautiful and slender and nude, slowly walking towards the huntress recording it on her body cam. The next frame merely showed a blur, starting from where the asari had been, and ending right in front of the unfortunate huntress. The third frame was the asari again, but… not her. Her full and rich blue skin had paled considerably, her ribs were pressed against the ghastly flesh, and her beautiful face had elongated into an ugly snarl, complete with a jaw that should not have been able to open that far and three inch fangs to fill the unnatural gap.

"So you've got a serious infestation, how far along is it?" Garth asked, his tone never wavering from pure professionalism.

The image of the planet came back at Aethyta's behest, and then the blue land turned red, save for a few, tiny splotches of blue where citizens had walled off entire cities to hold the monsters back, "The red represents areas the local populace count as 'overrun'. Essentially the entire planet at this point. I won't lie, we know next to nothing about the situation. We can't perform proper aerial reconnaissance because every time we drop a drone into the atmosphere, it isn't a quarter hour before one of those scaly bastards show up."

"What about satellite imagery?" the one in green armor, Antoine, asked from his spot around the holotable, "I'm guessing you must not be able to get much more than fuzzy imagery from space if you're sending drones, which also means that you can't keep your drones high, which puts them at an altitude, where they're vulnerable to forktails."

"That's pretty much it," Aethyta confirmed, "We have no clue what's causing this, but there's some sort of field about half a kilometer up that distorts imagery. We can't even look through a magnifying lens to see what's down there."

There was a sound akin to a rock slide that, when the matriarch's mind finally caught up with the pattern of the tumbling gravel, said, "That's not good."

Captain Nisira, uptight as a huntress could be when it came to protocol and more than likely upset at the lack of respect shown by the witchers to what she likely perceived to be their betters, snapped back, "What a firm grasp of the obvious."

Well at least she wasn't being outright hateful, so there was that.

"No you don't get it," Antoine said, urgency in his voice, "Someone put that there. I don't know if you wrote that off as natural phenomena due to the monsters or what, but those fields don't just pop up out of nowhere."

"Leshens can put them over their territory, keeps prying eyes out, but to do it to an entire planet, you're looking at a powerful Source. Stronger than any sorcerer or sorceress the Alliance has," Garth confirmed, his already serious face getting even more grim.

"Then who's putting it there?" Aethyta asked, feeling much more tired at the realization that this entire effort was going to be significantly more difficult than expected.

"No idea, but, no one expends that much energy, and remains undetectable. You put us there, we can find them."

This was the part it all hinged on as far as the witchers were concerned, though they'd find the Republic willing to pay them nearly any amount, they could probably get a billion credits apiece if they asked for it.

"What's your price?"

…

"Looking for someone?"

Jane Shepard turned at the voice, finding a fairly nondescript human man sitting outside the lobby of Barla Von's office. The volus had been cold and condescending, right up until she mentioned her great uncle and the fact he was literally fifteen minutes away on foot. Then he had opened up and revealed… almost nothing. The Shadow Broker had been pursuing Saren for a few years now, ever since he had turned his back, but every agent the Broker had track him, had turned up dead in much the same fashion as the archeologists and other civilians had on Eden Prime. Sucked dry of their very soul.

"Excuse me?" she asked the man, who was wearing clothing one would typically equate with someone who didn't have a home. Every article of clothing had pockets lining nearly every available square inch, was a variation of colors producing no sensible or memorable pattern, and was ultimately just… grubby.

The average looking man leaned forward over his, of all things, paper newspaper, "Not many people walk into Barla Von's office and leave with nothing new on their person. So I took a stab in the dark, that you might be looking for someone."

Something about this person was… off, and it wasn't just his 'stab in the dark' that was clear to anyone with half a brain that was anything but.

"Guess again," she retorted before starting to walk away.

"Perhaps I was foolish to assume," he said to her and the two marine's backs, "It's just it worked out so well on that detective that was looking for Saren…"

"Excuse me?"

The man looked back up, acting surprised that Jane was speaking to him again, before settling back on his newspaper, saying, "Oh, nothing. I highly doubt it is of importance to you. Just a turian detective, looking into some information on someone… I helped him out."

The N7 ripped the paper out of the man's hands, drawing an unconcerned look in his brown eyes, "No, really, I'd love to know all about Saren."

The vagrant, for that is what he had to be what his costume meant to portray, leaned back, propping one foot on his opposite knee, "Perhaps I'd be willing to tell you, but first, you must indulge a curiosity of mine. Is this revenge, or justice?"

"He killed hundreds of people in an unprovoked attack!" Williams suddenly blurted from behind Shepard, heat practically pouring off the fiery marine, "Does it matter what our motivation is? What does it even mean to you?"

"It means everything, Miss Williams, to everyone," the man said, his voice dropping into a dangerous tone as goosebumps ran up and down Shepard's skin, "And I don't believe I asked you."

"I won't lie, I want to hurt him for what he did at Eden Prime, the lives he took, and the way he did it," Jane answered honestly, as was her general policy, for it was easier to deal with the truth, than remember your lie, "But to me, this is about making sure he can't do it anymore."

The man smiled, and Jane was not comforted by the expression. He pointed a finger at the newspaper in her hand as he stood up, "It's amazing what you'll find in the print these days."

The N7 looked down at the paper, a small article in the bottom corner of the back page catching her eye.

 _ **Quarian Shot Twice in Lower Wards, Claims Spectre has Army of Geth**_

Kaidan and Ashley crowded around her shoulder as she read the article, which was bare of anything but the essential details. Quarian shot twice, taken to Doctor Michel's clinic in Lower Wards, in moments of opioid induced lunacy she claimed to have evidence to indict a Spectre for colluding with the geth that attacked Eden Prime.

"Tabloid journalism, how degenerate…"

All three Alliance soldiers looked up at the sound of the vagrant's voice, only to find that he wasn't there. A quick look around the serene background of the Presidium revealed that he was nowhere to be found.

Alenko stood apart from the two women and shook his head, "Weird."

…

Kara'Tiil gripped the purple vermillion fore grip of her new rifle as she crouched down behind a crate in the back alley between the market place and Chora's Den, having designated this as the final ambush spot. It was the only space that made sense. There was no other area that was consistently empty enough at this time of day, no space that was sufficiently cut off to prevent anyone from hearing an investigating.

They needed to get the Pilgrim in an isolated space because they need something from her. If they just needed her dead, they'd have shot her and let her lay in the street without fear of a follow up investigation by C-Sec.

Her suspicions were seemingly confirmed as a turian, wearing sleek black armor and sporting a hand cannon on both hips and a rifle across his back walked in and leaned up against the wall at the bottom of the alley and waited. This was the one the Pilgrim was supposed to meet, Kara was absolutely convinced of that.

And so she waited… and waited… Keelah! Who was late to their own attempted murder! This was just rude, Kara was trying to save the other quarian's life and she had the gall to be late? Perhaps this wasn't the right place? Maybe she had overestimated her own abilities as a hunter, and had picked the wrong place? Should she leave? Try and track down the quarian and just follow her, should she give up?

No. No, Shepard wouldn't give up after only an hour. He understood, he was a proper hunter, he had laid in wait for over half a day on Elysium, waiting for the lycan to return to its lair, she could wait another hour. Besides, it was clear even after a few minutes of following her, that the Pilgrim was trying to waste time on her way to her destination, and was only out and about because she was restless.

That was when the Ancestors decided to reward her patience as a now familiar purple shape appeared over the stairs and walked down them, headed directly for the turian assassin, either unaware of his true role, or simply believing that he wouldn't try to kill her.

"Where's Fist? Where's the Shadow Broker?"

"They'll be here, don't worry…" Keelah, that was the slimiest voice she had ever heard on a turian, "Where's the data?"

Peeking around the corner of the crate, Kara saw the turian running a hand up the much smaller quarian woman's arm, either caressing her or searching for this data that she supposedly possessed.

Deep breaths, deep breaths, remember what Shepard told you, Kara told her self as she rolled out on her stomach, going completely unnoticed by the pair at the bottom of the stairs and the pair of salarian assassins making their way down the other set of stairs.

The Pilgrim noticed the salarians, too, and Kara could see the realization hit her like a ton of scrap metal. She was likely going to die… unless the biologist turned tactical marksman could steady her Ancestor's damned crosshairs.

The young Pilgrim smacked the hand caressing her shoulder away as she took a step back, "The deal's off!"

The turian assassin pulled one of his hand cannons off his thigh and placed the barrel in the center of the quarian's chest, "Fine by-"

Her shoulder definitely hadn't healed fully as the rifle smacked into her wounded joint. It mattered little how much pain she was in, however, as the high velocity round passed right through the low grade barriers of a street thug, punched through the light armor of a cheap hitman, and perforated the three chambered blue heart of a cowardly turian.

Both salarian assassins and homeless migrant stood stock still as the turian collapsed to the floor, threat unfinished.

"Move!" Kara shouted from her spot as she rolled back behind the crate she had been using for cover. An explosion could be heard from her position, followed by multiple gunshots. Some were the sharp staccato of an automatic weapon, but one was the distinct boom of a shotgun.

Popping back out from behind the crate, the young biologist leveled her rifle at the scene below her. One assassin was already dead, but the second one had managed to pin the Pilgrim behind a skinny computer terminal.

Another shot of pain to her shoulder fixed that problem, though she was far less accurate on this one, as all Kara managed to do was kneecap the amphibian.

That wasn't an issue, however, as the other quarian merely emerged from behind the terminal and racked the slide on her shotgun before painting the walls of the alley green with the guts of the gutless salarian.

"Damn," a weathered voice said from the opposite staircase, "I knew we took to long to kill Fist, Shepard. We missed out on a good fight!"

There, at the other end of the alley, stood a familiar woman in N7 armor, complete with that fiery mane of red hair, and was accompanied by two, much less familiar figures. One was a krogan in red armor, with a red head crest and red eyes, whereas the other one was turian in blue armor, with blue face paint, and a blue rifle.

Kara simply stood there for a second before raising her hand and waving it back and forth, "Hi Jane!"

 **I think I'll end it there. I could add more, but I'm kind of tired right now, and I told myself no bed until I get a chapter out! Which is ultimately a disservice to myself, really.**

 **I didn't feel the need to show you a lot of what happened in the Saren investigation, only the portions I wanted to change, really, as I assume, perhaps wrongly, making an ass of me for certain and perhaps even upstanding ladies and gentlemen such as yourselves, that you know what goes down. Honestly, those scenes are a little tedious to write anyway and I can fill in the necessary detail for one to understand the rest of the story later on.**

 **No more threats to end the story, I learned my lesson, you've properly berated me and my clear lack of priorities when it comes to the absolutely voluntary and exclusively self serving action of writing fan fiction, but I do have a question for you.**

 **Should I include any other Andromeda characters in this fic? I know a lot of you guys hate Andromeda, even if I were to be honest the only explicitly good game of the franchise was ME2, but you have to admit some of the characters, like three, were actually good characters even if they didn't necessarily have good character.**

 **Thanks for reading!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Not the best chapter, was distracted, a little bit by the voices in my head, and occasionally outside of my head though thankfully those are far more rare as I get older, and the fact I got a new bow! Got that baby sighted in, gotta wait a while before I get to use it though.**

 **Anyway, onto the story, a filler bit, setting up the Elutania arc. Also! Smut warning! Not for sexy times between a man and a woman, or a man and man or woman and woman, I'm not one to judge, but the purest, most wholesome of love, between a soldier and his/her gun.**

Tali looked around the office of the Human Ambassador with a little apprehension. In just two hours she had gone from homeless, helpless, and hunted by assassins, to a member of a Spectre's team, a crew member aboard one of the most advanced ships in the galaxy, and hunted by legions of geth under the control of a mad turian.

Well at least something stayed the same.

Even during the trial she had felt the crosshairs on her back as she presented the evidence she had pulled from the geth unit to the Council. The very Council that had banished her people and there she was, groveling and sniveling beneath them like she was the very vagrant they all thought she was. But Shepard had shielded her, taking the attention from the Council and all the politicians present, verbally dressing down the three most powerful individuals in Citadel Space for their inaction. Even the human ambassador, Regis, had let the Council know exactly how egregious their failure was.

That had led to the, somewhat reluctant, anointing of Jane as the very first human Spectre, something that the engineer had gathered was very important for the goals of the Alliance, and with Tali's inclusion on Jane's personal team, something that could prove useful for the Migrant Fleet, for reasons other than a quarian girl's lust for killing geth.

Still, there was an unsettling shift that had happened in her life, not because it was bad, but because it was such a drastic shift. A few hours ago, the simple sight of a krogan would have sent her scurrying, now she was sat directly next to one who was busy looking over her shotgun, the only thing that kept her alive for the past few months, with a critical eye.

"Your compensator is damaged, looks like it's been that way for a while," the old, scarred reptile commented as he slapped the component back into the short ranged weapon. Tali had been aware for some time that the compensator was damaged, and wasn't entirely sure what the krogan could tell her about her shotgun that she didn't already know…

"It's causing you to pull your shots, that's why you only winged that first salarian in the alley. Might be good enough to kill the little frogs, but you'll find humans and turians are a little hardier than that," Wrex continued, unperturbed by the doubt the quarian kept firmly inside her own mind, "You've also got a dead coil third of the length up the barrel, you don't necessarily have to replace it, but you should pull it and take one from the end of the barrel and swap that in there. It'll help keep your muzzle velocity up, and help make up for your bad compensator."

Well, she didn't know that. Then again, how could she know? She didn't have a thousand years of combat experience across hundreds of major and minor merc wars. So maybe she should bottle up some of her doubt when one of her new crewmates said they knew something she didn't.

A thick three fingered hand pulled another component out of her modular shotgun, "Ammo block is fine, but your razor is on its last legs. Means its not properly regulating your slug size or spread, definitely not helping your busted compensator."

The krogan handed the shotgun back to Tali who quickly stuffed it back into its spot at her lower back, muttered a thank you, to which Wrex barked a laugh at her awkwardness, and observed the rest of the room's occupants.

The human's ambassador, Regis, was deeply engrossed in a conversation with Shepard and that human military officer, Anderson? Sure, why not. They seemed to be talking about leads for Saren, last locations geth had been spotted, that sort of thing. Tali really should be more interested in the conversation, this would directly pertain to what she where she would be going and what she would be doing, but ultimately she was too busy focusing on the people, being the social quarian that she was.

First there was Jane Shepard, who in the two hours the Pilgrim had known her, had already displayed every quality Tali wished she could possess herself. She was confident, smart, fierce, an eloquent speaker, a kind person, and a powerful fighter. She was also beautiful, which if the engineer was being honest with herself, was a point of some envy for the suited quarian.

Captain Anderson was carrying some sort of weight on him, specifically a psychological weight. He was about to make a serious sacrifice, and he knew it, he accepted it, but he didn't like it. Tali wasn't sure what the sacrifice was, but considering the fact he was a Captain of a war vessel, a place of significant social responsibility, respect, and admiration, it was likely not going to be a small thing to give up. Keelah, it might be his captainship itself.

Then there was Regis, who in just one sentence shared between them, had already become the quarian's favorite person within the room. In one statement, he had expressed a deep understanding of quarian culture, a Pilgrim's struggles, a sense of humor, and an open acceptance of her presence with the group. Add that to the fact he was alarmingly handsome, clearly well cultured, and a superior intellectual and he was just a dangerous person to be around if you were a female of any species.

Garrus Vakarian and Kaidan Alenko were standing off to one side of the room, talking about the rule of law on the Citadel, or more accurately, they were debating about the merits of the bureaucracy inside C-Sec, while Ashley Williams stood next to the most interesting person, at least to Tali, in the room, Kara'Tiil nar'Moreh.

The two women were doing something similar to what Tali and Wrex had been in looking over her shotgun, in that Ashley was observing the quarian woman's weapon, though clearly Ashley was a much greater admirer of the rifle than Wrex was of the shotgun. So much an admirer in fact, that the krogan next to Tali noticed as well.

"Let me see that thing," the reptile rumbled as he stood up and moved over to the balcony where the human and quarian women were standing.

Williams looked as though she might resist the krogan battlemaster's request, but ultimately, and smartly, gave up the rifle to the ancient reptile just as Tali finally made it over to the spot, while eyeing Kara through the corner of her polarized visor the entire time.

"Damn… never felt a rifle this well balanced before," Wrex said as he looked through the sights out into the Presidium, "Scope's pure too, this thing wasn't cheap… Hard to believe a quarian had the creds to buy it."

"I didn't," Kara confirmed immediately, "It was free."

Wrex's wide face scrunched up, huge rows of dull, crushing teeth exposed by thick scaly lips peeling back, "Who would someone give a gun like this away?"

"It had something to do with Menae."

Garrus, who had finally agreed to disagree with Kaidan, heard the mention of Palaven's moon and most strategically significant military base in the turian's home system, and moved over to the group, "What happened on Menae?"

The taller quarian shook her head, "Something to do with bruxae, whatever those are."

Wrex appeared to know what they were, and confirmed it as he spoke again, "I've seen bruxae before. Lead an entire company of mercs to take investigate disappearances on this Terminus world. Humans, turians, asari, even krogan, anyone who walked into the forest to the east, none of them came back."

The krogan handed the rifle back to Kara and continued, "Thirty of us walked in there, and the first thing we noticed was all the birds, of every type, all singing, so loudly it drowned out your own thoughts, until the sound of a human woman singing broke through. That's when I knew we were in trouble. It looked like a human female, small, smaller than Tali here, totally naked, and stunningly beautiful, in looks and voice alike."

He shook his head, "Only reason I survived was because she was too busy slaughtering everyone else. Never considered myself a coward before, would never have thought of fleeing a fight, but that was no fight."

There was some silence as the group attempted to ascertain what sort of horror a bruxa must be to cause an ancient krogan battlemaster to talk about it in the fashion he did. Then, Kara broke the silence once more.

"The witcher I travel with, he killed three of them on Menae…"

"Two, actually, the third was an alp," a human voice rasped from behind Tali, the group, and indeed everyone in the room focused on the man who had somehow snuck in without anyone noticing, despite the fact there was only one entrance into the office.

Keelah, did he have… snake eyes? That might have been the most unusual trait about him, but it wasn't anywhere near his only unique attribute. There were scars on his face to give Wrex a run for his credits, he was nearly as tall as Garrus, who was otherwise easily the tallest person in the room, and the sensors in Tali's envirosuit that she had programmed to detect energy fields, so she could know who was a biotic, were absolutely and utterly confused by his mere presence.

"Shepard!" the other quarian exclaimed, bringing confusion to the rest of the non humans in the room.

"Kara," the man pointed at the purple rifle in Wrex's hands, "You fire that thing already, huh? Here I thought you'd never have a use for it."

The biologist ripped the rifle from the still stunned krogan's hands and folded it up before putting it on her back, "Shut up, Shepard."

"How did negotiations with the Asari Republics go?" Ambassador Regis asked nonchalantly, still scrolling through a datapad filled with reports from the Virgo Cluster.

"If I survive the next few months, I'll be at the very least, one million credits wealthier."

"Wow," Shepard, apparently not the only Shepard, whistled in response, "What kind of monster comes with that price tag?"

Shepard, the not Jane, Shepard, shook his head, "If I want to be included in this contract, then I'll have to decline answering that question," then he looked at Kara, "Which is why I'm here. If you still want to tag along, you have some paperwork to sign."

"Okay, no problem," apparently the other Pilgrim trusted this stranger quite implicitly, as she quite easily dropped everything she was doing and started walking over to the man.

"Not gonna back out on me? It's going to be dangerous."

Kara scoffed, "Right, because the pirate base was so safe! That rotfiend you claimed was dead nearly ate me!"

The dark haired man shrugged, "It was a joke… I thought it was funny!"

"It exploded all over me! My suit wasn't clean for a week!"

"Yeah, you smelled bad," the human chuckled as Kara slugged him in the shoulder, only to retract her hand immediately, waving the undoubtedly bruised appendage in an attempt to shake off the pain.

Those snake eyes swept over the rest of the group, soaking in their appearance with a predatory gaze, making Tali outright uncomfortable with its intensity.

"Sergeant Vakarian, good to see you again," he said to the lone turian of the room before turning to Jane, "Quite the menagerie you've managed to gather, baby girl."

"Don't call me that in front of them, Uncle Jon," Jane chastised her apparent uncle as she stood up, datapad in hand, "And they're fine."

"I don't doubt that," he replied, the engineer just now noticing that his expression never changed, almost as though his face was paralyzed, "Not gonna arm them with standard Alliance Marine Corp rifles are you? What is it, that Avenger series?"

Ashley tensed up, very prickly that one, at the insult to the assault rifle slung across her back, but Jane beat her to the punch in response, "Might not have a choice, I'm going to be funding this one on my own, and I can't hardly afford all the fancy guns you have."

The man, Jon, reached down into a slot on his belt and pulled out a small metal card, with the image of a snarling beast etched onto it, "Before you leave the Serpent Nebula, head over to Bekkenstein, talk to a dwarf named Goran, he'll be the only one. Show him that card, he'll open up the reserve armory at his bank branch. There's a bunch of weapons both the School of the Wolf and the School of the Bear have sold to him for a reserve stock over time. Don't worry about price, you need it, you take it, he'll put the price on his commission for my next contract I take with him. Might have to work a few for free, but he's always been straight with me."

"That's quite generous of you," Regis remarked as he set down the pad, "I had no idea a sense of family solidarity ran that deep with witchers."

The witcher, as this Jon Shepard apparently was, adopted an expression for the first time since he first entered the room, and judging by how uncomfortable he was with it, he didn't make them often outside this room either.

"My sister just entered hospice," Jane gasped at the news, clearly not aware of the development, "When she's gone, it'll just be me and Jane. Money's worth it to me."

He turned to the newly minted Spectre, "See you around baby girl."

…

"Cannae hardly believe he'd be tha' generous," Goran said, shaking his head as he lead Jane through the back, "Mangy fook had never so much as tossed a credit chit to a homeless man his whole life, but all of a sudden, family shows up outtae da blue, an he stoops over, bowin an scrapin, throwing credits where'er you ask."

The N7 kept her initial response down, Goran was apparently someone her great uncle had a great deal of respect for, and as the dwarf had said, Uncle Jon had been more than generous to her. It would not do to burn down any of his bridges. Reformulating her thoughts, Shepard finally spoke up.

"I think he's always had a different way of showing generosity. Rather than tossing credits at homeless people, he pays them for some basic work."

The banker/mercenary agent/colony councilman stopped at the door of the vault door, "Aye, think you might be on to something there, lassie. An Ah meant no disrespect, damn reliable, the whoreson, always goin out ah his way tae make sure the employers were well takin care ah."

Thick fingers that were natural to dwarves and no one else punched a code into the vault door, received a green LED indicator for his trouble, and spun the door handle, the clanking of interlocking bars receding into the door audible through the thick steel. Then the short, stocky man tugged on the handle bar and pulled, revealing the contents to Jane and her new team.

"Quads…" Wrex laughed as the door opened completely, "This was a good pit stop!"

The red crested krogan quickly stomped into the room and picked up a gun with a roaring bear stamped on it. There were five barrels on it, arranged in an hourglass formation, and connected to a large box like body with overpowered electromagnetic rails and an oversized eezo core.

"Bear witcher's call tha thing the Jackhammer," Goran explained as he walked into the center of the room, "Gun switches barrels every time ya fire, means it don't overheat so quick, can pry get a good… ten… eleven shots off afore ya overheat."

Wrex just cackled as he hefted the huge personal artillery weapon masquerading as a shotgun.

Garrus had walked over to the sniper rifles, just looking before one caught his eye. It was long, black, and undoubtedly heavy. What was most curious, was the magazine jutting out the bottom, and the brass cased shells sitting next to it, "Is this a gas operated sniper rifle?"

"Actually, no. Black Hornet's still a mass accelerator, but instead of smaller rounds tha punch teeny little holes in tha bad guys, she blows em wide open with a thirteen millimeter slug. Means you gottae take the bullets with ya, but ya never have to worry aboot makin sure their dead."

"Yeah, think I found my haul, Shepard," the turian marksman said as he hefted the long, blocky rifle up, running a talon over the snarling wolf, "Where are the bullets?"

"Grab some silver ones, too," Jane ordered as she walked along, trying to find something that might be more her speed. Clearly her crew didn't need any sort of push to do the same, "Never know what we might run into out there."

Goran hustled over to help Garrus find the special ammunition for the aforementioned Black Hornet as Kaidan pulled curious case up, and opened it, "Ho! Should be a warning on this case. Caution: lots of explosives inside. Wonder what some of these do…"

Ashley walked up behind him, "I've got a tablet here, I think it has an inventory for those cases… Hang on, Moon Dust: spreads electrically charged silver shards over a broad area, disables monster's magical abilities AND drones, optical camouflage, and optical sensors such as cameras, infrared sensors, and laser tripwires."

"Which ones are those?" Kaidan asked, as he started popping the hatch on every case he could find.

"The silver looking ones," Williams said before pausing, "Wait, grab the green ones too! Dimeritium bombs, totally shuts off magic within its effective range, which is adjustable from five meters to twenty five meters."

"Grab eighteen of both, that's three for each of us," Jane commanded. If she were being honest with herself, she wanted all of them, so they could have a hundred of them, but she was already planning on paying Goran for the haul as soon as she could. The Spectre would be damned if she'd put what was soon to be her only remaining relative in stupendous debt when she could do something about it.

That was when something caught her eye, an assault rifle with a snarling wolf printed on it, but what set it aside, was the fact the wolf was etched in gold. It was roughly in a similar shape to the Avenger series of assault rifles, or the prototype N7 Valkyrie that hadn't been approved for testing yet. The biggest difference was that there were three barrels, two on the bottom, and one on the top, and it was a sleek, shiny black.

"Ash, give me the tablet."

Shepard flipped through the pages of the inventory on the tablet till she found the image of the rifle in front of her. The… Pitchfork? There was an explanation of the name, apparently the farmer's tool was a bane of many witchers back in the expansionist era of the Nilfgaard Empire, and this was some sort of an attempt to reverse the fortunes, but it was the technical information that was interesting to the N7.

The bottom two barrels were for automatic fire, and used the side to side configuration to limit the heinous walking the Avenger series was known for. Instead the rifle would 'wobble' back and forth, limiting downrange accuracy, but increasing short to medium range accuracy. The top barrel, however, was exclusively for long range engagements, firing on semiautomatic mode, and using overpowered capacitors to add an extra thump to each shot.

As Jane looked down from the tablet to the seven rifles laying on the rack, she knew she might be putting her great uncle into a little more debt than intended.

"Grab a crate!" she shouted as she lifted the surprisingly light assault rifle, "and a dolly."

…

Cora stood with her team of Huntresses in the hangar deck of the Asari Republic cruiser Illyana.

"That's one ugly ship," Deela said to the blonde human as they stared down at one of the witcher's personal ships that had parked themselves in the hangar bay. If Harper remembered correctly, it belonged to witcher named Shepard, the one that had brought a quarian along.

"I mean seriously," the maiden commando continued as the rest of the squad listened, "With how much they get paid, you'd think he could afford something a little nicer."

"With how much they're getting paid, I'm shocked Matriarch Aethyta hasn't been arrested for treason," Freh'ya, a matron with lavender skin and red face markings, spat, "I mean seriously, why don't we just drop down a hundred thousand commandoes, and take care of those animals! It wouldn't cost six million credits."

Another commando, Arysa, who was a light blue with dark green facial markings, held out a finger, "First of all, it probably would. Secondly, they tried to capture and hold a rural town with one thousand soldiers. Not only were they unable to capture the town from the monsters inside, they couldn't even clear a landing zone so they could be evacuate. Every single one of them died down there."

"Goddess," Laira, a matron of six hundred years with the palest shade of blue among the gathered commandoes, "Harper, how did your people survive living amongst those things?"

"They weren't so numerous for a long time," the blonde answered, watching as the Viper School witcher stepped out of Shepard's beat up looking shuttle, "Witchers, way back in the eleventh century, hunted them to near extinction, which had the unintended consequence of nearly driving themselves extinct."

Freh'ya snorted, "So they let the monsters grow back to make sure they'd always be needed, how noble of them."

Cora shook her head, "I'm not entirely sure what happened, but something in twelve eighty one caused a Second Conjunction, thousands of monsters of all types came flooding through, and there were, at most a dozen witchers alive in the world. Even then, the monster's weren't really causing us too many issues, until a century later when the Nilfgaardian Empire was toppled by the overwhelming population of monsters on the western coast of the Continent."

"So how'd you survive that?" Laira asked, the vanguard of the group, along with Cora, was surprisingly curious for an asari matron.

The human biotic shrugged, "If I recall correctly, local governments funded the organization of witcher schools, which weren't much for a really long time. They managed to cut back on the threat, but they weren't as strong as before. It was something like… nineteen thirty… nineteen thirty five… I think nineteen thirty, when the first major School was organized."

"Yeah, forget history…" Deela said as she put her hands on Cora and Arysa's shoulders and shaking them, "Is he taking his shirt off? We gotta get down there!"

Sure enough, down on the hangar floor, Bayak, who had been joined by Shepard and the Griffin, Antoine, was taking his shirt off, left only in a pair of civilian sweat pants. Even as he did that, the Wolf, Shepard, followed suit, leading to Deela nearly fainting on Harper's shoulder, "Goddess, let's go!"

No one moved, much to the maiden's dismay, though they did watch carefully as Antoine snapped his fingers, and a small green ball of light appeared above his hand as both shirtless witchers pulled out long, metal staffs, shaped and presumably weighted to simulate their own swords. Shepard and Bayak separated themselves, standing nearly ten meters apart, before turning and facing each other and nodding once.

The Griffin flung the green ball at the Viper, who struck with his staff, hitting the ball of light in such a fashion that it was flung towards the Wolf, skipping across the deck before Shepard returned it with a swipe of his own. At a somewhat steady pace, the ball was exchanged between the two witchers for a few turns, before Antoine summoned another one, and flung it at the Wolf after he had just returned the first to Bayak.

The addition of a second objective changed the pace, and was further mutated by each combatant taking a step towards each other. It was still manageable for the observer's eyes to keep up, but Cora felt little doubt that she'd be able to compete in this game, and that was before Antoine threw the red ball at Bayak.

When the dark skinned witcher struck the red ball, it split in two, and both witchers took a step towards each other.

Shepard's blade was a blur as it sent back the original green ball, and split the two new red balls, sending five total green balls back to Bayak, and both stepped forward.

The Viper was a whirlwind, and the Wolf a match, as the air between them was filled with streaks of light, bounding back and forth, as the Griffin, standing there grinning, would at a steady rate, feed different colored balls of light into the stream.

The greens seemed to be the standard, simply bouncing back and forth. The reds would double each time they were struck, up to two times before turning green and remaining in the thread. There was a blue ball, that seemed to bounce faster than the greens, zooming back and forth so fast it seemed to be a set of lines between the opponents, rather than a ball zooming back and forth.

The two witcher's no longer had visible arms, they're limbs moving too quickly, their demands too strenuous, to bother making sense or restricting themselves to the realm of the known for their observers.

Talein's Daughers were unable to move, look away, or comment on the spectacle they were witnessing, so awed were they. Many of the team members were older than all three witchers on the floor combined, yet they had never seen anything such as what was happening before them. It was good their eyes were glued to the spectacle, for all too soon, it was over.

A green ball struck Shepard in the knee, followed by a blue energy hitting him in the chest, and another green one capping it off with a blow to the forehead, laying the shirtless witcher out across the steel decking.

"He could be hurt," Deela said, now leaning on Harper and pressing into her, "We should get down there so I can perform mouth to mouth."

"You're shameless, and he's not hurt," the human said with an eyeroll, "But we're off duty, so if you really wanted to, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from going down there and talking to them. As it is, we're all just staring at them anyway."

"I should also point out that they can hear you," a crisp voice said, one that sent a spike of fear through Cora as much as it made her straighten out of pure respect. Captain Nisira always had that effect on her, the eight hundred year old huntress was nearing her matriarch stage of life, and had all the charisma that came with the distinction.

"Or did you forget the briefing we had on them before escorting Matriarch Aethyta to the meeting at the Alliance Embassy?"

"Come on," Freh'ya snorted, "We're over a hundred feet away, in a busy hangar, talking quietly. They can't hear us."

Naturally, that meant everyone had to look over at where the witcher's were, and at Antoine who was waving his hand at them before pointing at his ear and nodding vigorously. Clearly they could hear them quite well.

Then the bronze skinned witcher waved his hand again, this time beckoning them down.

"Well it seems we've been invited," Nisira told her team of commandoes, "Freh'ya, you will keep your opinions to yourself. You've trained for centuries to hone your biotics into one of the finest killing tools in the galaxy, I don't think you'd last five seconds against one of them."

Cora felt a little disrespected by the comment. As adversarial as the lavender skinned commando could be, she was also the most naturally talented warrior of the group. To say one of those mutants could kill a highly trained, highly skilled huntress with ease was against all conventional wisdom, and certainly a spit to the face of Harper herself, who worked as hard as anyone on the team to be as good a commando as possible. But if it was Nirisa saying it, then there had to be something to it.

By the time they got down there, Bayak had moved on from his partner and was sending green balls of energy at a wall five meters from himself, his arms a blur as his waist twisted and flexed to set his shoulders for each strike. So fast was he moving, Cora honestly couldn't tell if he had five, six, or seven targets. The southern Ofieri didn't so much as glance at Talein's Daughters as they passed, not that the human of the group could blame him, he clearly had his hands full.

Meanwhile, Antoine and Shepard had squared up, the Griffin swinging open hands in the space between them, as the Wolf smacked them with his closed fists, a translucent barrier flashing briefly with every impact. Cora recognized the practice at work after a few hits, as Shepard was only hitting the hand when it would lunge forward. The pattern the witcher from Gulet was designed to hide the moment when he would lunge for the witcher from Undviik, working Shepard's mind as much as his body as he had to predict the time and place of the attack, and hit it with enough force to repel the attack, but not so much as to put him off balance for a possible follow up.

That said, they were going through the exercise very, very quickly. Shepard's arms weren't a blur, but they were moving fast, in the sense that they struck quickly and often.

"Nineteen thirty eight," the Wolf grunted out as let out a flurry, blocking Antoine's advances.

"Excuse me?" Cora asked, feeling as though the statement might have been directed at her.

Shepard stopped two attacks with quick left jabs and brutally turned another away with a strong right, "The School of the Wolf was reinstated by the Northern Kingdom's Parliament in nineteen thirty eight. Nilfgaard reestablished the School of the Viper in nineteen seventy three, Skellige rebuilt the School of the Bear in twenty nineteen, and the United States of Toussaint, Sodden, an Cintra restarted the School of the Griffin in twenty thirty six."

"Okay," Arysa started, looking around suspiciously at the three witchers that were standing on the hangar deck, "How much did you hear?"

Antoine shrugged, before throwing Shepard a combination he likely wasn't expecting, as one nearly slipped past the Wolf's impenetrable defenses, "Every word that wasn't whispered. Could barely make out that you were whispering really."

"What else can you hear?"

"It's better if you don't know," a filtered voice said from the ramp on the transport. Cora and the rest of the biotics turned to see the quarian standing on the incline, "Shepard, where do you keep the anhydrous ammonia?"

The Wolf let off a flurry, sweat rolling down his skin and droplets flying from his hair and beard, "Locker on the port side."

The quarian nodded, turned back, and stopped in her tracks, "Why do you keep a poisonous chemical in a plastic container in the same locker as you keep knives?"

"There was space there," as the witcher dropped back a step, and threw a couple of lazy jabs out to throw the Griffin off his rhythm, "Why do you need a poisonous chemical?"

"I've introduced a dextro bacterial culture to genetic material from several different types of monsters, I'm going to poison them to see how they react."

"What about the scale itch?"

"I'm still analyzing the results, but preliminary findings suggest that ogroid mutagens and vampire mutagens are transferring the most viable traits-"

"No, I mean, you got rid of the scale itch on my ship, right?"

The quarian scoffed as she marched up the ramp, "I'm not stupid!"

Shepard held up his hands, telling Antoine to stop as he yelled back, "My Fool's Parsley still haven't recovered from what you did to them! Just because I'm immune and you're in an envirosuit doesn't mean the ship doesn't have to be clean!"

"I keep telling you, Fool's Parsley and Ginatia plants don't comingle, just because they come from the same region doesn't mean you can plant them in the same dirt, they'll kill each other!"

Shepard turned to Cora and winked, surprising the biotic as he turned back to the ship, "But the Ginatia plants are fine!"

The quarian girl was quite clearly distressed at this point, practically screaming her response back, "That just means they're winning the fight!"

"The Ginatia plants didn't kill the Wolf's Bane!" Harper was confused at this point. Shepard was clearly pulling the poor dextro's leg, but his expression hadn't changed from slack blankness, but when the migrant burst out of the ship, clearly exasperated beyond belief, and took one look at the witcher's face, it was clear there was something there the blonde wasn't seeing.

"Oh you bosh'tet, I hate it when you do that!"

"You tease her like that often?" Antoine asked as he watched the young girl disappear into the ship.

"All the time, it's hilarious."

Laira was looking at the ship when she butted in, "Why do you have a quarian with you?"

Shepard just shrugged, "She asked, she's useful, doesn't hardly cost anything to feed. Not much of a downside altogether…"

Bayak, still batting the green energy balls off the wall, grunted, "It's because of that bubbly butt, ain't it?"

Nirisa laughed openly at the remark, "Quarian's always have great asses. I don't know what it is, maybe it's the suits, but even the men have high and tight rear ends that you just want to," the pre-matriarch made a gesture with both hands that Cora found lewd, and out of place with the woman she had come to regard as her personal role model.

"Where are the other two?" Cora asked, desperately trying to avoid this particular road of conversation, especially if there was any chance they got all the way to the end and turned the topic to her.

The door nearest to them opened up, and off the lift stepped part of the answer as the absolutely monolithic Bear witcher emerged, wearing a sleeveless black top that showed off incredibly thick, incredibly long, and heavily scarred arms that shone with a small sheen of sweat. In those monolithic appendages, was a large black box, held closed by a pair of electronic silver clasps.

"Well there's Jared," Antoine said to Cora before speaking up, "Find the weight room?"

"If you can call it that," Jared… grinded. That was the best way Harper could describe the sound he made. Literally like the sound of rocks being ground up by huge steel jaws, "Didn't even have a bar capable of supporting a thousand kilos of weights."

Arysa shook her head, "Why would anyone need that much weight on one bar?"

The seven and a half foot tall Bear, possibly literally a bear, set the case on the ground by the group, "Warm ups."

"This the launcher?" Shepard asked as Jared leaned over and released the clasps.

The giant witcher nodded and threw the cover back, showing everyone a long, gunmetal grey cylinder with a large attachment a third of the way along what was presumably the barrel, and a simple pistol grip.

"Shoulder mount? Most RPG's nowadays are fired more like assault rifles," Antoine said as Shepard leaned down and picked the launcher out of the case, throwing it over his bare shoulder and running a finger along the roaring bear engraved on the side.

Jared, for his part, just shrugged and said, "Most RPG's nowadays shoot projectiles the size of a grape, this one…"

The monolithic man pulled the foam top of the opposite side of the case off and pulled up what looked like a giant cartridge, "Shoots footballs."

The Wolf holding the launcher found a bolt sticking out the side of the launcher then pulled it back, revealing a chamber that looked like it would be a perfect fit for the cartridge Jared was holding, "Initial launch?"

A pair of huge, beefy paws slapped the cartridge in the chamber and slammed it closed, "Compressed gas launches the rocket a minimum of ten yards, then the thruster takes over. Has a flight time of sixty seconds, reaches Mach nine, and has the explosive force equivalent to about a quarter ton of TNT."

"Not taking any fucking chances, are ya?" Bayak asked as he walked over to look at the launcher, "How's it lock on?"

Just as the Viper finished his question, the attachment to the side of the launcher expanded, shining a bright blue laser and pointing a small barrel straight ahead.

"You can fire a tracking dart, or keep the laser on your target," the Bear explained, "We have a tracking system, but we can't get it nailed down, it still loses track of wyverns. Follows forktails and slyzards fine, wyvern… gets within about thirty feet and nosedives."

"The missile? Why?"

"Damn things shit themselves, for whatever reason, missile wants to follow that."

"Good, you're here," a noble and aged voice broke the meeting of witchers and commandoes gathered around the missile launcher, "Getting everyone familiar with weaponry?"

There was the fifth witcher, the other Wolf that every witcher present respectfully called Master. Garth looked older, despite the fact he didn't really have any features most would consider belonging to old people. He had grey hair, true, and wrinkles around the eyes, yes, but if Cora had only ever seen a picture of him, rather than met him in person, she would have thought him to be around his mid forties.

It was his demeanor that made him seem old, ancient. The three hundred year old witcher carried himself like an eleven hundred year old matriarch, with experience, confidence, and a weight on his shoulders that only comes with age.

"Haven't hardly started, Jared was just showing us the new guided RPG," Shepard replied for the group, "How'd the meeting with Aethyta go?"

Garth sighed, "She's not terribly happy, seems to be under the impression we can clear an entire planet of monsters…"

"Haven't exactly been able to accomplish that on the Homeworld, and we've had twenty two hundred years," Antoine remarked, "What did you tell her?"

"I told her, we can make the problem manageable if we can hunt down the source, but elimination is going to require a cultural change from the population, or evacuation and orbital bombardment," the mustached witcher said with a shake of his head, "So… it sounds like the asari may try and start up a fifth School."

"WHAT?" Freh'ya exclaimed from her spot standing at the outside of the group with her arms crossed, generally unhappy about interacting with the lowly monster slayers, though at the moment, Cora, at least, shared her initial reaction.

Deela leaned in, "Asari witchers?"

Bayak, who was standing shoulder to shoulder with Asyra, who looked both pleased and entirely uncomfortable at essentially rubbing up against a half naked sweaty human male, shook his head, "Can't be, not at first anyway. Lot a testing would have to get done first. No idea what the Trial of the Grasses would do to a biotic, let alone what would happen to a non human. Shit ain't even been done on a elf before."

Antoine cocked his head, "That's a thought actually, there's a lot of biotic potential candidates that we can't even interview for candidacy right now. Start with them, only portion trials, monitored by the best experts, that'd give us a baseline for starting on asari."

"I'd have a hard time believing the Alliance would be okay with us creating new witchers that aren't human or based on the Homeworld," Bayak pointed out.

"We were formed by political powers, but all four Schools went private over a century ago, about fifty years before the Alliance even existed, we take military contracts, but so do the Blue Suns, Eclipse, and dozens of other PMC's," Shepard said in rebuttal, "As long as we don't violate the terms of our contracts by giving up sensitive information, then I'm not sure there is anything they can do."

"This is all conjecture," Garth interrupted as one of the commandoes was about to put in her two credits, "And it helps nothing. Right now, the Matriarch has given me enough information of the situation, and a possible starting point. We need to strategize."

The ancient mutant turned to Captain Nisira, "Which brings me to my first point, Matriarch Aethyta has graciously volunteered your services, Typically, I would say no, but this isn't a human colony with a sizable asari population on it."

"You want guides?" Nisira asked, "I'll go, I've actually been to this colony fairly recently even."

"That's not going to work, unless you can clone yourself four times," the ancient Wolf replied, "Witcher's are lone hunters, our strategy will be the assignment of objectives to each hunter. Once we hit the ground, we go our separate ways."

"You want me to split up my team?"

"I'm asking," the mutant denied, "These are your people, I won't force anything onto anyone."

"Cora and I volunteer!" Deela said, grabbing the blondes hand and shooting it up into the air along with her own blue one, "Do we get to pick, or…"

"Hold on!" Cora said, pulling her hand away, "What are we doing here? How long are we going to be down there?"

"That's something we'll need to decide, but if you are coming along, and Nisira approves it," Shepard shrugged as he answered the blonde, "Probably return to the ship once a week."

Arysa shrugged, and Laira nodded, and the paler of the two spoke for the both of them, "We'll go, better than sitting on the cruiser, doing nothing."

Freh'ya snorted and shook her head, "Fuck it, I'll go. Only because I want to see these 'monsters' up close."

"Oh you gonna see em up close," Bayak nodded, "Real close. Gonna want a shotty for this one, and get yaself a knife."

"Captain?" Garth asked Nirisa directly.

"Fine," the eight hundred year old asari snapped, clearly unhappy at violating one of the most basic rules of the huntress manuals, "But I want them back up on the cruiser every day!"

"Not possible, not if we are going to be pursuing leads. It's not ideal, but there will be times where we won't get to sleep for seventy two hours. I'd be willing to look at every fifth day, but no sooner."

"Then I want all my commandoes wearing body cams, to be uploaded daily along with a report on your progress and conditions," the Captain pushed.

Shepard raised his hand, "I have a bunch of spares actually. I wear them on hunts to better document physical behavior of monsters. Once we set up a line of communication with the cruiser, it wouldn't be hard to just stream the feed right back to you."

With the nod of Nirisa, Jared knelt down and locked the missile launcher back in the case, "Good thing I brought an armory with me."

"I've got spares up in the ship, too. Even a pair of Pitchfork's," the younger Wolf added.

"Got enough silver dirks to outfit everyone here," Bayak nodded, "Got a couple of Hexer's too."

"We'll have to arrange for a supply shuttle from the Homeworld," Antoine said, "Griffin has the fastest ships, if you can make arrangements with your respective Schools, it can have a load in system by the time our first five days is up."

"How long until we are in system?"

"Two days," Cora answered automatically, somewhat dizzied by the pace everything was falling into place.

Garth nodded, "Then lets get to work, pair off, we'll go through the basics!"

Deela held out her arms as the ancient Wolf walked off to the side, "Basics of what?"

The witcher turned, viper eyes pinning the maiden to her spot, "Killing monsters."

 **Yeah, it's bad, sue me. I wasn't in the right state of mind for writing I don't think. Schizophrenia can hit hard when it wants to, plus I've been reading more news than I should, and it's fucking me up. I'm from a conservative area, so I grew up and still am conservative, but I try and read multiple news sources so I can get both sides but… dear God what is happening?**

 **Anyway, yeah, I warned you about the gun porn, I like gun porn. That shit's my jam, but I'll try and refrain from focusing on it in the future. Next chapter will be landfall on Elutania, but I have a question about next chapter for you guys.**

 **Should I focus on just Shepard, or all witchers? And if I do all witchers, should I do one chapter per witcher, split every chapter up between them, or just show snippets from each hunt?**

 **No Jane for a while, but her and her uncle's storylines will converge, though we'll hear from her before then, just because I have a badass scene in mind.**

 **I think that's it…**


	10. Chapter 10

**Late at night, slightly tired, working in ridiculously hot conditions. Who insulates a building where you have six kilns all reaching two thousand degrees Celsius jammed into one corner, and two, giant rotating dryers, using superheated steam around four hundred degrees Celsius. And then, why would you not install exhaust fans so you can move some air? Plus it should be illegal to make a guy wear full sleeve FR shirts in that building. I took a thermometer with me today, it was one hundred and forty degrees where I was working today, and I have a pretty physically intensive job.**

 **Alright, enough complaining, get to reading!**

How regular people dealt with mosquitoes, Shepard would never know. Freya be damned, they were annoying just flying near him, the witcher couldn't even imagine how Cora must be feeling five meters behind him as the tiny insects from the Homeworld, that had somehow managed to find their way onto every single planet that had even a shred of standing water and levo organisms to feed on, buzzed around her face, dove at her ears and nostrils, and ultimately just made the poor girl's life a living hell.

"Should have brought my damn helmet!" the blonde whispered frustratedly, probably only trying to speak to herself as it was nearly low enough for Shepard to miss. Still, they were in hostile territory at the moment.

The witcher paused in the marshy, blue grass, his boots sinking a few solid centimeters into the ground, and turned to face the human biotic. The huntress in training stopped, mirroring the hunter's actions as he raised a finger to his lips, and disturbingly quietly, stalked over the wet, sloppy ground of the lower plains found on the southern continent of Elutania.

"You know where we are?" the Wolf was so quiet, even he could barely hear himself, though fortunately Cora happened to speak the same language, and could read his lips.

The blonde looked confused at first before responding equally as quietly, "Near Ly'A's Point?"

The witcher turned and pointed to one of the few trees standing in the wild, swampy grasslands. The green, barkless trunk was shining with sweat in the midday heat that drove the humidity of the marshes right to one hundred percent, and the branches were decorated with thick, lush, blue leaves.

And the intestines of dozens of different sentient peoples.

"We're in something's hunting grounds, something that is not natural, something that could hear something, even as insignificant, as a frustrated whisper," Shepard explained, so quiet he actually didn't say anything, simply dramatically and clearly mouthed the words, "Next time, bring your helmet!"

The pair started off into the four meter high grass again, only able to keep sense of their direction by the large clearings made, hopefully, by local wildlife, or not so hopefully, a monster about the size of a fiend. There were ones crisscrossing across the marsh, created by something on the move, and there were massive trampled fields, where something, several somethings, had laid down for the night, but any tracks that might have told the witcher more were gone, taken by the water table literally resting about an inch beneath the mud that had quickly filled them in and pulled the soil in on it.

The smell wasn't familiar to Shepard either, though that meant nothing. Werewolves of different planets had different smells, necrophages having fed on different species will have different scents, even dryads from different forests on the Homeworld would have different scents, though they, at least, were all green.

One smell that never seemed to change, however, was the raunchy stench of rotting meat, and the Wolf stopped after only a quarter kilometer. The sickly sweet smell of decaying flesh was light on the air, carried by a light breeze, but it was fresh, too, not like the smell being cast from the macabre decorations of the lonesome tree.

The breeze was light, coming in just over the tops of the tall grass, but there was no air movement below the thick blue flora, meaning the body was close, but there was no real way to track it down by scent alone. Witcher's still had human noses, and for all the genetic tricks in the world, human noses weren't capable of directional smell. They could follow trails that were laid out, but they couldn't detect what direction a scent comes from.

Fortunately, he had eyes. Eyes that were sharper than any known bird of prey, eyes that could pick out a drop of dried blood from thirty feet, and he was a hell of a lot closer, and there was a lot more of it. There was even more than blood as well, as the witcher moved closer, signaling Cora to follow suit.

"Running, hit with a glancing blow," Shepard moved over to a few snapped stalks of grass, the blonde catching up and looking over his shoulder, "Small body, similar in size to a human female of five foot three to five foot nine, probably not more than a hundred and fifteen pounds. Means they weren't armored. Civilian."

"How can you tell? It's just trampled grass?" Harper whispered as quietly as he was muttering over the stained grass and trampled foliage.

The Wolf only held up a finger as he moved along, "Got up, bleeding, not heavily, flesh wound. That way."

Silently, literally, Shepard followed a trail through the standing grass, looking for snapped stalks and smudges of dried, brown blood. The stench of rotting meat was getting stronger by the step.

"Top of the grass bent over, came from above, flyer. Multiple paths, multiple flyers, small frames… harpies?" the witcher looked up at the bent blades near the top of the huge grass fields and spotted a pair of feathers caught in the blue flora, "Dark, too dark for a harpy, striations in the pattern, dark red… Erynia."

The thought of the ugly, vaguely female, feathered monstrosities having hunted down someone in this grass didn't sit right with the witcher. Not because he was a kind hearted person who was concerned for his fellow galactic citizen, but because they would never have left enough of the body behind to rot. So that begged the question.

What chased them off?

"Harrassed her through into the next clearing, took another hit, much more severe," Shepard stopped over a piece of grass that was heavily stained with dried blood. It had rained last night, as it did every night in this forsaken swamp that stretched across the blasted continent. That meant the blood was fresh, fresher than whatever was giving off the stench of rotted flesh.

Slowly, carefully, Shepard slipped Grey Wolf from its sheath, but reached out and grabbed the barrel of his biotic companion's Pitchfork, "Necrophages, let me handle it quietly, don't shoot unless you have to."

The blood splatter continued through a small gap in the giant grass, where something was on the ground on the other side. Again holding out his hand to halt his companion, the Wolf focused his hearing.

There were noises, voices more like, almost human in inflection, though they spoke no words. Instead, it was the way air passed through the mouths as they were simultaneously stuffed full of what Shepard could only assume was the flesh of the poor woman/asari whose trail he had been following. There was the soft sound of razor sharp claws rending flesh, scraping bone, and pulling at organs.

Finally, there was a soft snarl, as Shepard assumed another one got too close, or took too much in one handful, and the other one reprimanded it.

The dark haired witcher turned back to the blonde biotic, "Drowners, three of them. Follow, but stay back, I want to do this quietly."

The pair quietly picked their way through the thin layer of grass, the three grotesque caricatures of human beings kneeling over a small blue body as they dug their sharp hands into corpse. So fixated on their meal, they didn't notice the black armored shape emerge from the shadows of the towering grass. Nor did they hear the nigh imperceptible squelch of light feet racing over trampled grass and wet mud. One of them didn't even notice thirty seven inches of silver/dimeritium punching clean through its chest.

The other two did notice, however, not that they got the chance to do anything about it, as a silver dirk punched through the skull of the second drowner, killing it instantly. The third attempted to stand and let loose a screech that would let every creature inside a kilometer know exactly where and what was going on. Unfortunately for the aquatic necrophage, Grey Wolf slipped from its impromptu scabbard and swept across the drowner's neck, sending the snarling cranium flying with a flick of the witcher's wrist.

The blue hued carrion feeders were about as mundane as it got for witchers. There was a common saying among the School of the Wolf entirely about the creatures, show me a puddle, and I'll show you the drowners. One of the first contracts Shepard had ever taken on in his career as a monster slayer had been for a large pack of drowners that had taken over a small pond in southern Kaedwen that had been used as a summer park. The human sized parasites were quick breeders, though no one had ever actually observed the process, and appeared to be asexual. If you had one water zombie around a puddle of rainwater, then you left it alone for a week and came back, you'd have twenty of them, spread out among all the rain puddles scattered across the ground.

They also had an unfortunate habit of tearing their meals apart, making autopsies on victims of other creatures much harder to perform, meaning many witchers went into confrontations with monsters under informed. Indirectly, necrophages were responsible for quite a few deaths in the monster slayer community.

Fortunately, they hadn't had long to start ripping into this one, leaving the limbs, head, and ribcage untouched, though they had completely ripped the abdomen apart and started feeding on the unfortunate asari's entrails. Still, beggars couldn't be choosers, and Shepard wanted to know what happened.

Why would Erynias abandon a perfectly good meal when she had finally fallen in the middle of an open clearing? What had picked the victim up and thrown her through the air? Because it wasn't the flying hags. Why was this person out here? Weren't the only people left on the planet supposed to be holed up in the major cities?

Only one way to find out.

The Wolf could hear Cora walk up behind him, doing her best to stay low and quiet, which he appreciated greatly, considering three drowners was an oddly small number, and there was a distinct possibility that there were significantly more around somewhere. He held out a hand and motioned her near the corpse, indicating her to kneel on the opposite side from him.

"Fine clothing, ragged, torn, dirty, been wearing it for days… weeks," Shepard started his observations into the audio log as he held up ripped piece of fabric, "Some fresh mud stains from running in the swamps, but most is deeply stained, been rolling around in the mud?"

The witcher then moved on to the body itself, starting with the hands, "What have you been doing lately? Chipped nails, dirt underneath them, blisters along the finger tips and palms… what's this?"

The Wolf pulled the Witcher's Cache from his back and opened it, pulling a pair of tweezers from the case along with a sample container. He then turned his attention on the small foreign body embedded in the skin of the right hand.

"Iron shavings?" he quickly pulled a few more, deposited them in the sample container, and put it into the Cache when Harper, who was inspecting the left hand, grabbed the witcher's attention.

"What's this?"

Viper eyes looked down at the disfigured blue palm. Heavy scarring mutilated the skin in a pattern that was most definitely not random. The scars looked old, but not because they were…

Shepard pulled a scalpel from the Cache and ran the sharp instrument around the edge of the scar, and lifting the damaged skin up, "Burns came from the inside. A magical brand, used for punishment… has a limited range…"

The Wolf turned his predatory gaze to the towering, lonesome tree decorated by the intestinal tracts of various persons. When he had first encountered the trail, they had been closer to the town than the tree, now that they've found the body, they were further from the town than the tree.

"Tree represents the range limit," the monster slayer turned back to the body, moving on from the hands and onto the upper torso and upper arms, "Ribs sticking against the skin, emaciated. Multiple wounds, some from erynias, some are older. Older wounds are non-defensive, but not done by any tool. Hard labor? Who's running a slavery ring on a planet overrun by monsters?"

"You think she was a slave?"

"I think she was recently enslaved, as little as a month ago, then she tried to escape, or somehow found herself out here, and took it as her chance to escape. The brand was activated, and left on, erynias and other creatures hunted her down, and now here she lies… It doesn't add up."

"What doesn't add up?"

"I can't find anything on her that would indicate what could have thrown her around like a rag doll other than some heavy bruising on her ribs," the witcher pointed out as he lifted the body up and showed the mottled skin, "Why did the erynias stop attacking her when they had her mortally wounded? Why leave the body to the drowners? Did whatever did this," he pointed again to the massive bruise, "chase them off? If that's the case, why didn't that eat her?"

Harper stared at the witcher for a long moment before answering the only way she could.

She shrugged.

"Not going to learn anymore here, let's go."

…

An erynia crouched atop its perch, clutching an asari cranium in its hands, the flesh already stripped from the face as the feathered hag tapped its long thick claws over the exposed bone, looking for a weak spot to penetrate the skull through and get at the juicy brains inside.

As the creature prepared to plunge a dirty digit into the cranium, it shifted atop the steal hood of the receiving drag it had picked as a roost. Immediately below the hybrid monster was the concrete roof of the grain elevator the drag emptied into, where a dozen of its sisters had made their nest. The bodies of blue skinned asari littered the collection of branches, uprooted grass, and metal plates that made up the sprawling nest made by the brood of erynias.

Occasionally, the blue skinned beauties would be interrupted by a different sort of body. Some were pale fleshed, some were dark skinned, others were scaled, there was even one giant corpse with large plates over its brow, a huge hump, and thick scales over its body. That one had been a pain to drag all the way up the nest.

The erynia punched a claw through the skull and pried it apart, exposing the most delicious part of the asari, sticking a long tongue into the cavity and lapping up brain lobes when suddenly, the metal gate on the ladder on the side of the grain silo clanged shut.

The feathery hag, and all of its compatriots, whirled on the gate, and found nothing but a yellow painted steel gate, firmly held close by the spring loaded hinge. The rest of the erynias quickly went back to gorging themselves on the foul smelling flesh of the piled corpses. The one perched atop the receiving leg was not so careless, however. It had lived a long time, survived many hunts undertaken by humans and elves. It knew it was best to investigate.

A quick flap of its wings brought it down rather gracefully to the ladder. There was nothing there, but that didn't mean anything. The vaguely human, but beaked face swiveled quickly as it took another step closer to the edge. None of the grain dust or loose twigs had been disturbed. Perhaps it was still on the ladder?

It peaked its head over the edge and was rewarded with a silver tip punching right through its forehead and through the back of its skull.

Shepard pulled the blade out and reached up to grab the body, pulling it over the edge of the ladder cage and tossing it to the ground without a sound. Carefully sheathing Grey Wolf, he looked down to Cora Harper on the ladder below him and pressed a finger to his lips, bidding her to be as silent as possible as he climbed over the gate, rather than risk the hinge squeaking or the door to slam on the handrail. It was useful bait, and served him well to take out the alpha erynia, but that trick wouldn't lure all of them one at a time.

The witcher silently slid up behind a grain drag as he swept his snake eyes across the top of the grain silos. Impressively, Cora managed to slide up the drag without hardly making a sound, and crouched next to the Wolf as she pulled a Hexer with a suppressor attached from a leather holster on her thigh.

Shepard looked to the blonde woman to his side and held up ten fingers, to which the biotic held up ten fingers, dropped both hands, then held up one finger.

"Eleven?" he mouthed as he leaned in closer to the huntress in training, "You sure?"

Cora held her hands together and laid her head out across it, then pointed to the north side of the silo. Viper eyes peaked over the edge of the metal barrier he and Harper were hiding behind and found what she was referring to. An erynia that was curled up on itself, sleeping.

He ducked back down and looked his companion in the eye while mouthing, "Start with the ones up high."

Both popped out of cover unnoticed, two heavy pistols with suppressors fixed to the ends of the barrels began ejecting brass shells as silver slugs perforated the feathery hags perched up high. Shepard plugged two in their respective brains before shifting to a loner that was savaging a human corpse and coring the frail looking bird hybrid through the heart. Cora pumped two slugs into the chest of an erynia that was preening its feathers, and put two rounds through the abdomen and one round through the head of another that had been taking care of 'personal business' when the witcher grabbed her shoulder and pulled her to the ground.

The monsters that were perched lower did not let the deaths of their compatriots go unnoticed, though, stupid creatures that they were, did not seem entirely alarmed about it. They did make some noise, however, and were definitely paying a lot more attention than they were before.

"Reload," Shepard grunted, not bothering with silence at this point as he ejected his half empty mag and slipped in a new one, "Stay high, I'll go low."

The two burst out again, this time catching the eyes of all six remaining feathered hags, three of which never even got the chance to realize what they were looking at.

As three erynia's dropped dead, two launched towards the witcher, thick claws extended and beaks wide. It made them such easy targets for Grey Wolf as it flashed silver from its scabbard, dismembering the first, and impaling the second.

Unfortunately for the witcher, this also made _him_ an easier target for the last monster, who nearly managed to lay a hand on the monster slayer, when a twelve millimeter silver slug punched right through its ribcage and dropped it to the concrete roof.

"Thanks."

"I know you could've handled it," Cora shrugged, "I just wanted to even up the kill count."

A twitch on the ground and the Wolf pounded his boot onto the neck of the still living erynia, "Got to make sure they're dead. One shot to the chest won't do it for these things."

"Then why not just use standard mass accelerators like the rifle you gave me?"

"Because then it would take twenty shots. Hardier than they look. Most monsters can survive without their primary bodily functions for much longer than it takes for them to heal. They can still succumb to blood loss, and that's why witchers use gas operated, chemically propelled firearms," Shepard explained, "They open bigger holes, cause more internal damage, bleed the targets better."

The witcher shrugged, "Plus you can reliably get silver inside the wounds. Some monsters, it has little to no effect, others, like harpies and erynias though, it's incredibly toxic. Like cyanide."

"So what now?"

Shepard shrugged again, "It's a good spot, I wanted up here to take a look at Ly'A's Point, determine how to approach the town, but this might be a good spot to camp. Away from the mosquitoes, at least."

The blonde, who's face was already pockmarked in a few places from the insect's voracious appetite, nodded vigorously, "If we clear out the corpses."

"You better get started then."

Not paying any attention to the woman's scoff, the witcher walked over to the edge of the concrete silo stationed a mile outside of the town's border, marked quite clearly by the concrete and steel retaining wall designed to keep flood waters that would rise from a particularly vicious storm at bay. The wall wasn't high, and wouldn't work well at keeping anything capable of climbing from simply going right over it, so perhaps that was one reason the town had been overrun.

That and the giant hole punched right through it.

The concrete on the retaining wall was reinforced with steel rods, the construction essentially the same as that found in human colonies, if the aesthetic was different. Still, the wall was probably a full meter thick and there was no sign of explosives. The break was too localized to have been a bomb, the edges too rough to be someone digging their way through, the only reasonable cause would have to be something big, gigantic really, simply bulldozing its way through. Something like… a fiend.

That was an unsettling thought.

Of all the creatures that had come through the Conjuction events, chorts and fiends were something that had remained entirely unchanged. There were differences between individuals, sure. But each fiend, each chort, was capable of the same things, the same unbelievable feats of strength, disturbing levels of intelligence, and that third eye, that when opened, was capable of unspeakable terrors.

While other monsters were thriving, and adapting, those relicts stayed steadfast in their shape and size, though that might have more to do with the fashion in which such creatures bred, that is to say, they don't.

All of the autopsies, every body, every trophy, no witcher, no amateur hunter that got lucky, no platoon of marines had ever killed a fiend or chort that had any sort of reproductive organs. There were no males, no females, not even a fashion in which they could reproduce asexually, the monsters just seemed to… appear. No one was entirely sure why they formed, where they formed, or if there was a way to keep them from forming, though theories were abound.

The only thing Shepard knew for sure about the creatures, was that wherever the blood of innocents runs freely, you are sure to find a fiend. Wherever great evil was undertaken, a chort was waiting around the corner. Nobody knew why or how, but whenever death was undertaken in a great, systematic, industrial manner, one could expect to find wraiths, necrophages, and at the top of the food chain, the very relict that had smashed its way through a concrete barricade.

There was no evidence visible to the witcher from this angle to suggest where the creature that had made the breach was at this moment, but he could clearly see evidence of the effects.

Streets were filled with pools of water, either having filled up with water from rainfall, or water from floods, if the asari had installed a sewer or septic system within the small city, then that was also filled. Which made it a little odd that there were no drowners romping through the puddles and pools. There was no evidence of water hags building a nest, in fact, there was no evidence of necrophages making their homes here at all.

As viper eyes swept across the town, they took note of many things that were out of place for a supposedly abandoned town. For one, none of the roofs were caved in. They were dirty, the sides of the buildings were damaged, some had holes the size of a truck smashed into their sides, but the roofs were just fine. With the trees planted alongside the streets, towering over some of the shorter buildings, Shepard found it suspicious that there wasn't a single branch lying across the top of the town.

Second, there was evidence of foot traffic around the town, though none of it left the town. Pathways were cleared of debris, there were piles of trash and junk neatly tucked away in the corners of the towns, and there were no bodies.

Sure there were bodies laying in the nest next to them, but each of them showed the same kind of preexisting injuries that were indicative of hard labor and brutal punishment. Their hands showed signs of burns, though not to the extent the corpse out in the swamps had, and all located on the same spot, on the left palm. Even the krogan corpse showed signs off mutilation at the hands of… something. The green plated reptile looked like it had been brutalized significantly more than the others, whether it was because he could take it, or because he was more pernicious, Shepard wasn't sure.

Viper eyes glanced to the horizon, where the sun was making a rapid descent on the eastern edge. The daily cycle here was thirty hours long, and at this time of year, the night lasted around twelve hours. Just long enough for some good reconnaissance.

A grunt from his companion reminded him that he was still faced with the somewhat of a quandary of what to do with her. He watched as she pulled an asari body over to a pile at the far edge of the silo. Cora was good, for someone who wasn't a witcher, but nobody inside the Republic had thought the mission through all the way, and as a result, the human biotic wasn't equipped with any night gear. The Pitchfork she was carrying had infrared capability on the scope, but she couldn't walk around only using the rifle's optics to see.

The witcher hadn't packed any either, to be fair, but that was more due to the fact that his eyes were already as sensitive as high dollar night vision sensors.

Then there was the fact that a fiend's ears were as sensitive as a witcher's, and while Cora might be plenty quiet for a human, she wouldn't be able to keep silent, and keep up.

He'd have to do this one alone.

…

" _I've got you on scope, no heat signatures in the rest of the town._ "

Shepard merely tapped his comm twice, letting Cora know he heard her as he crept along the fetid pool of water up to one of the brick buildings that made up the main drag of this particular town. The more he looked around, the more he was sure that the asari of this world were reliant upon terrestrial transportation. The streets were all far too wide to account for foot traffic alone, there were vehicle garages attached to nearly every homestead he passed, and the road signs were all elevated as to be seen, not over a crowd, but over a row of wheeled automobiles.

Which only raised further questions of course.

Not of why they used them, terrestrial vehicles made a lot of sense for an agricultural community such as this one. Whatever grain they harvested here they clearly harvested in bunches, and tranports capable of lifting thousands of tons of grain around are expensive, whereas a terrestrial vehicle designed to operate on the soggy soil of the marshes around them were cheap, and wagons they could drag behind them even cheaper. No, the question Shepard had was similar to many other questions he had had since investigating Ly'A's Point.

Where in Freya's name were they?

The water in the street rippled ever so slightly. Could have been a slight gust of wind, or a leaf falling on the placid pool, or…

The Wolf quickly clambered up the side of the brick building, experienced hands and strong fingers gripping the rough mortar lines and hauling his weight up with the ease of a practiced mountaineer. He needed the high ground, and now that he was more towards the downtown section of the settlement, the buildings were close enough for him to stay up as he moved around the town, looking for clues as to what had happened, and where the fiend went.

And what the hell was stalking him.

Silent footfalls propelled him over tiled roofs, the witcher stayed low to avoid providing a silhouette to anything beneath him keeping a watchful eye on the sky. As he moved, so too did whatever was following him, though it kept a more than respectful distance, and was disturbingly silent itself. Only the slight ripple of water in the pool below him alerted the witcher to its presence, and only the fleeting shadow weaving between buildings let him know it was still following.

" _Shepard… I'm getting something, west of you, a warehouse isn't cooling down with the rest of the town. In fact it's getting warmer."_

The Wolf looked to the west, and quickly spotted the building to which she was referring. The rapid rate at which the night was cooling everything off had led to condensation and dew sticking to every metallic surface in sight. Even Grey Wolf was beginning to show signs of moisture along its pommel, yet the tin sided warehouse was obviously dry.

Perhaps it was worth the witcher and his newfound shadow to take a look.

The density of architecture at this point was enough for Shepard to never have to descend, and soon he was one short leap from the steel wrapped building. Whatever had been following had kept close, though it had yet to ascend, or even try and move closer. Whatever it was, it was certainly cautious, but not sentient. No thinking creature was that quiet.

Without another thought, the Wolf jumped from the tiled roof to the steel gutter of the warehouse, and quickly clambered up to the slanted tin roof. Even through his armor he could feel the heat the building was putting off, and he could hear the activity inside. There were several different fires crackling, muffling the sound of hushed voices speaking in several different languages, all of which Shepard recognized, though he only spoke a two of the major ones. The sound of footsteps told of adult sized asari or human females walking around on a dirt floor. There were heavier footsteps, though they were much rarer, and were weighted similar to human males or turians.

Shepard crawled his way to the peak of the roof, where a single hatch was located in case anyone needed to do maintenance on the roof top HVAC unit, which by the looks of it, no one has for some months. This was only further backed up by the chain and padlock around the latch.

The rusty steel chain proved no match for Igni, and the witcher was soon right through the hatch without a sound, and into the hot, smoky rafters of the warehouse. The scaffold platform created a raised perimeter around the edge of the warehouse, with two ladder accesses to the lower level, where there were four campfires set up, burning fallen branches, rubber tires, smashed furniture, and what appeared to be the gnawed upon skeletons of domesticated animals. Lovely.

There were also people around these fires, fifteen of them. Twelve were asari, three were human, two of which were male. They were all fed, and from more than just beloved pets clearly. None of them were showing ribs sticking through, nor was their skin covered in nasty blotches from malnourishment, yet every corpse Shepard and Cora had come across on this little expedition had been starving, sickly, broken people.

Perhaps some more observations were in order.

"Moren," one of the younger looking asari asked an older one at the nearest fire to Shepard, "Tay left last night…"

"I'm aware," the elder responded. Apparently this one was Moren.

"Well," the younger one was obviously hesitant, "She hasn't been seen being taken back to the harpy nest today either…"

"And?"

"Well… maybe she made it!"

The elder asari sighed and her shoulders slumped before turning to the young asari, "To where? Every time one of them becomes like Tay, they all run south into the swamp, Tay is not the first one to make it past them, or so we think, but where would they go? There's a few farms down that way, doubtlessly having been smashed by that… creature that rampaged through here those months ago, but the nearest settlement is five hundred kilometers in that direction. Where would she have gone?"

The young one seemed to be mollified by this, though tears were pricking at her eyes at the dismissal, but Moren continued lecturing, "Every week, one of us, seemingly at random, goes mad. Doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, does nothing but bang at the walls at night and scream and rant during the day. Then, they run, getting chased by those harpies. So what if they all go south? Maybe they just remember the one before them running that way, but if that's where they go, I'm sure we don't want to follow."

"What about that… creature… out there?" one of the human males asked, he was sitting next to an asari in her middle years, likely a bond mate, "The one that's stalking us? It's probably already run out of wildlife out there, it's only a matter of time before it starts picking us off, whether we group up or not. We need to try and go!"

Moren looked at the human sharply, "We tried, a month ago, remember? We all got in our transports, armed ourselves to the teeth, and went east, trying to get to Kyal City, remember? There were hundreds of us then! That… thing. The antlered monstrosity. It was waiting for us! I'll take my chances with the predator stalking the streets over that monster roaming the wilderness."

"We can't just wait here, hole up in this warehouse, night after night, waiting for that creature out there to come and get us," another asari, this one was older than the first, but definitely younger than Moren, "We have guns! We need to take the fight to the monster prowling our streets!"

"We have peashooters, meant for picking off scavengers. Gronk had actual assault weapons, and those harpies carried him to their nest and made him scream for days…"

"So, what do we do?!" a voice from group that were all facing Moren, though many were surprised when another voice spoke out.

"You can hire a witcher…"

All fifteen people in the warehouse rounded on the Wolf, who had adopted a relaxed stance, leaning up against one of the posts, arms and ankles crossed, without flinching as sticks with sharpened points, rusty bladed knives, and white might literally have been a peashooter all pointed at him.

"Who are you!" Moren shouted as she forced her way to the front of the group facing Shepard.

At that moment the wolf's head medallion laid out against his chest began rattling the ceramic armor, the steady sound of the silver clattering filled the warehouse before the witcher pointed to the wall he was leaning up against.

"I'd be more interested in what this is," he deflected, right as the very audible sound of claws raking against the side of the warehouse sounded, "Sharp claws, if it wanted to, it could probably cut right through the sheet metal."

" _Shepard, I've got a heat signature moving around the warehouse, looks big._ "

"Who's that?"

The witcher shrugged, "Vanguard specialist from Talein's Daughters, Cora Harper, good girl, not the greatest shot."

" _I heard that!_ "

"You were supposed to," he replied openly as he leaned off of the post as the clawing ceased, and instead the soft impacts of paws could be heard as the creature began simply patting the siding, "Mhm, retractable claws… just like a cat."

Shepard rapped his knuckles against the wall, resulting in a vocal reaction from the creature outside. The deep rumble of a dangerous predator emanated from the wall, "Deep, guttural vocals, predatory and frustrated, so capable of emoting. Judging by the sound… lion sized… Manticore."

Moren, the apparent leader that she was, stepped closer, "I won't ask again, who are you?"

The medallion stopped rattling as the creature moved on, probably just circling the building, only to be moving again as Shepard, in response to the elder asari, simply flicked the wolf's head medallion.

"Is that supposed-"

The blue skinned woman was cut short as the three humans all immediately threw down their makeshift arms, realizing instantly what the medallion meant, and how foolish it was to point a weapon of any kind at the mutant.

"Witcher!"

"What's a witcher?"

The medallion began rattling again, this time catching the attention of Moren as the creature came back around, either remembering where it was, or attracted by the noise, "I specialize in hunting and killing monsters. Like this one. It's a manticore, probably a male, judging by the tolerance its shown of both you people, and myself as I walked through the town, but you're right, it's running out of food out there. Now he's getting hungry, and splintered spears and BB guns aren't going to keep him at bay."

"You think you can kill it?" Moren scoffed at him, probably looking at the sword handle jutting over his shoulder.

"Killed plenty, but with a fiend out there, that's what the big antlered thing is called, you'd be better off keeping the manticore around. Might wound it for you, make it killable."

"And if it eats us in the meantime?"

"It doesn't have to."

The elder of the town frowned and started getting visibly agitated, "You just claimed in would start looking at us as food!"

"Ever fed a stray cat? Probably not, they're a Homeworld animal after all," Shepard began, his face never changing expression even as the medallion deadened once more, "If you feed a stray cat, it'll never go away. Some people find that annoying, particularly since they leave dead rats at your doorstep. Other people… enjoy dead rats."

There was silence at his statement, so Shepard decided to dig into the situation a little more, "The fiend, tell me about it. When did it appear, how often do you see it, what does it do?"

"You're the monster expert, you tell me."

The slits of his viper eyes narrowed dangerously, catching the crowd gathered in front of him off guard. The witcher didn't let another word out as he stared down Moren. Like most asari of her age, she didn't take other species very seriously, a costly mistake when dealing with a witcher, who were to be taken seriously at all times, by everyone.

"It showed up a week after the first monsters arrived, those drowners and scurvers began harassing our town," the human female decided to speak up, clearly not happy with the way their apparent leader was trying to compare wills with the first help they had received in all this time, "When it showed up, all the small monsters disappeared. It killed so many of us, we didn't have the manpower to remove the bodies, and the smell attracted those harpies."

"Erynias, actually, like harpies, but bigger, dumber," he shrugged, all without breaking his predatory stare off of Moren's eyes, "Doesn't matter, they're all dead now, so's Tay, by the way, I found her body this morning. Drowners got her, but I burned her remains. Now tell me, where have you seen it since?"

This time it was one of the younger asari gathered, "Only when we tried to leave in mass. Anyone who runs out there alone is always nabbed by the harpies… erinies, whatever they are."

"Anything special about the way it attacks? Anything tells as to when it might be coming? Does it howl, is there a mist, do you feel anything in particular right before your encounters with it?"

There were a bunch of confused glances being exchanged, which the witcher understood to an extent. It was an unusual question to ask for someone hunting a mindless beast, but of course the precursor to that is that the beast must, in fact, be mindless. Fiends were not, and more than anything, they liked to play games with their victims. Torture and terror were their favorites, and it was not unusual for survivors of the attacks reporting strange black fogs that would blot out the sky and their surroundings for hours on ends before the creature struck, or for strange sounds to ring out through the wilderness, leading to the terror of the creature's prey.

Finally, one of the group answered, a very young asari, probably not older than forty years, "It's quiet before it attacks. So quiet, you can't even hear your own footsteps."

One of the other asari, probably the child's mother, shushed her, and turned to the witcher, "I'm sorry, she's not been making sense since the attack."

The witcher ignored the mother, instead focusing on the child, so far as to even take a step closer, "You couldn't hear your own footsteps?"

The girl shook her head.

"Could you hear any background noise?"

Again, she shook her head.

"Could you hear the people around you talking?"

This finally got a nod.

This was an atypical tactic for a fiend, but it fit the profile all the same. Still, the entire situation was unusual. The monster was aware people were still alive in this town, it had to be, and fiends aren't known to be terribly friendly to territorial competition. They were spirits guided by malevolence, they weren't friendly to anything, which begged the question, why it was letting a manticore sit right in the center of its territory and hunt _its_ victims.

He needed more to go off of than this, he needed hard clues.

There was a roar from outside, the manticore had gotten bored, and was looking elsewhere for food.

"Cora, lock yourself in the motor house, and bar the door. Manticore is on the move and I can't guarantee it won't come looking for you."

" _What are you going to do?_ "

Shepard pulled a small, compact package from his back, and gave it a flick of his wrist, unfolding the carbon fiber compound bow and pulling the strings taught as the ten count quiver mounted to the side of it used micro-factories to produce diamond hard shafts attached to the silver tipped broadheads mounted inside the quiver.

"I'm going out on the town."

…

It hadn't taken long for the small avian creatures to come back after the erynias had been killed. Already there were small bright orange birds roosting in what definitely appeared to be long abandoned nests. The filthy feathered hags always snuffed out any native populations of birds, though how was still somewhat of a mystery. It could simply be the way they attacked anything that moved, it could have been smell, though unlikely considering avian's typically lacked a developed sense of smell, or it could simply be that there was something instinctual in the birds that warned of harpies and erynias.

Regardless, there was a light music in the air as the joyous birds remade their homes, even as Shepard passed by, slowly stalking through the broken down, flooded, and abandoned homesteads of the actual people of this town.

So far his search had revealed nothing of interest. There were prints of the great beast pounded into the light green asphalt paving the road, indicating it was impressive in size, though that was hardly anything strange. Dried bloodstains months old indicated where an unfortunate person had been eviscerated by the creature and hadn't had the luck for rain to wash it away yet.

There was a muted rumbling to the northeast, where the manticore was presumably trying and failing to eat some of the bright orange birds. The lion sized monster with a scorpion's tail and bat wings was more suited to the hunting of goats, deer, cattle, and bison, than small birds. But, like any feline, if it's hungry, it's going to hunt.

As Shepard stepped up to a fairly large homestead, probably once home to a fairly well off family, he drew back on his bowstring, pulling back the thirty two inch diamond hard arrow shaft, and aimed at a particularly fat example of the orange avian species. If he wasn't going to find the fiend, he might as well bait the manticore in with some blood and take care of that problem while he was out here.

He'd rather keep the creature alive. Manticores weren't evil, nor were they inherently damaging to sentient peoples' habitats. They were inherently dangerous, for they were apex predators with no equal in the natural world. Hell, in the Dragon Mountains, some manticores were known for taking down griffins, but as a rule, they didn't hunt humans, or any other sentient species. If hungry enough, or startled, they would, of course, attack, but they didn't typically go out of their way to hunt down people.

It was too bad he'd be forced into this, but if he couldn't take care of the fiend tonight, then the manticore would sabotage any efforts to continue the hunt by getting in his way. So not only would the beast have to die, but so did the little bird.

Shepard focused on the tiny target, taking care to make sure that his arrow wouldn't hit anything behind the bird that would damage the broadhead too much to be reused. The arrow shafts were easily replaced by the micro-factories in the quiver, but the silver tipped, tungsten broadheads were not so easily produced.

The background faded away as the witcher focused on his quarry, the fat orange bird not noticing or not caring about the gleaming edge pointing right at it. The clouds threatening rain faded, the humidity didn't bother him, he couldn't even hear the quiet song of the other birds.

Couldn't hear the birds… in fact he couldn't hear the rustle of the blue leaves in the wind… he couldn't hear the rattling of the shutters on the house behind him…

Shepard dropped his bow and surged forward, running for the street.

That was when the house behind him exploded outwards.

The witcher hit the ground in a roll, coming back to his feet, bow drawn and pointed back at the house… and the zebra striped fiend standing where the residence once was. Its maw opened wide, wide enough to swallow a dwarf whole. Fangs, as long as short swords, dripping with ochre slobber and glinting dangerously in the low light. Antlers, as broad and strong as the most ancient of oaks, with the remnants of the house it had just destroyed hanging from the bony crests.

That was when the sound came back, nearly shattering the witcher's sensitive eardrums with a sound wave powerful enough to make waves on the puddles in the streets.

Shepard focused on the third eye, by far the fiend's most dangerous weapon, hoping to take it out while it was still closed, and loosed his first of ten arrows.

The monster jerked as the arrow was whistling through the air, resulting in the silver tipped tungsten broadhead digging into the neck of the beast. It might have been annoyed by the projectile, then again, it might just have a nasty temperament.

The Wolf hit the grass as a sharp antler swung over his body, and rolled to the side as the house sized beast charged forward, its massive hooves pounding the ground and digging up dirt as its powerful legs slammed them down into the muddy grass.

Grey Wolf shimmered as Shepard's right hand drew the silver/dimeritium blade and drug it along the side of the monster. The razor edge shaving a few inches of hair, but doing little more than drawing a thin line of blood through the thick hide.

As he came to a knee while the fiend smashed through a tall, strong tree as though it were a twig, he dug the sword down into the dirt and drew another arrow and buried the deadly broadhead into the monster's hamstring. _That_ , it felt.

" _Shepard, what's going on out there?_ "

"Found the fiend!"

The sword flashed again as he leapt over a swipe from a powerful hoof and payed the monster for its trouble with a nice little cut across its front leg, cutting through the muscle nearly to the bone.

" _I'm moving to provide cover fire!_ "

Shepard rolled underneath the fiend as its jaws snapped right where he had been standing, and prepared to deliver thirty seven inches of razor sharp silver/dimeritium to the monster's heart. The attack never landed as the horror simply lashed out with one of its hind legs, connecting with the witcher and tossing him all the way across the yard of what once had been a homestead.

Grey Wolf had been sent flying from his grasp at the powerful kick, the witcher barely able to hold onto the bow and keep it from being crushed by his own weight as he hit the ground. It was good that he was able to do that, as he immediately snapped up, another arrow drawn and loosed in short order, this one finding the terror's open mouth, cutting a vicious roar short.

Another arrow struck the elbow joint of the front right leg, hoping to further limit the monster's mobility. The fifth arrow fired struck the fiend in the chest, splitting a rib, but failing to get any deeper into the creature. A sixth arrow glanced off the beast's thick skull, near the third eye, but it failed to strike true, however, as the heavy lid snapped open, and Shepard's world became only pain.

When his face hit the ground, the pain was already gone, but so was the fiend. It was on the run…

The Wolf raced down the streets, chasing the still rippling pools of water, Grey Wolf back in its sheath and bow in his hands.

" _Goddess, tell me that's not the fiend!_ "

"Is it the size of a house?"

" _Bigger._ "

"That's the fiend," he turned down a back alley, listening to the rumble of the fiend pounding through the streets and trying to cut it off, "Do not engage, it will turn to you and kill you. Just keep an eye on it!"

" _It's heading for the warehouse those people are hiding in!_ "

Of course it was, that was the plan after all.

Shepard slammed the bow on the top of a dumpster in the alleyway and drew Grey Wind, pointing the grey edge forward as he emerged from the alley…

And buried the blade all the way to the hilt in the monster's chest as he ran full speed into it. The silver blade punched through a lung, but missed the heart, not that it mattered, the beast barely even felt the wound.

That's what made fiends and chorts so dangerous. They weren't invulnerable, but injuries barely affected them. Chorts didn't even flinch, fiends just got angry, both simply would get more dangerous.

Such were the thoughts of Shepard as he was flung back down the alley where he slammed into a brick wall. As he looked up, he saw the monster looking at him through the alley, wounds from their first fight already gone, arrows ejected, and cuts stitched back together. The Wolf looked to his bow, only to have his view of it blocked by the powerful limb of the fiend as it started down the alley, foam dripping from its predatory maw.

The third eye was closed, but right now, the monster didn't need it, as it prepared to devour its helpless victim, only to have a spike drive right into its shoulder.

The fiend didn't even flinch, but it did look up, the exact opening Shepard needed to simply twist his fingers without fear of the third eye opening and stopping him cold. Fire burst forward, engulfing the antlered monster's head and shoulders, setting ablaze its long, gnarled fur, this time getting the creature to jerk back, right as a large, lion sized, winged monster slammed into the fiend's flank with a proud roar, claws raking along the bigger monster's ribs, and shedding blood over the damp alleyway floor.

The witcher burst into action, as he ripped Grey Wolf from the fiend's chest, and drug it along the bottom of the horror's stomach, letting more blood flow freely from the beast, before using the blade to hamstring the fiend as it grappled with the powerful manticore currently digging into it.

Shepard sheathed the sword and picked the bow off the dumpster right as the monstrous feline flew past him, the fiend finally shrugging off the annoyance, and glared at the witcher, third eyelid fluttering…

And was plugged in the malicious, horrific, terrifying red eye by a silver tipped tungsten broadhead.

Again the manticore flew past the Wolf, striking the fiend in the head and knocking it back and getting the monster to rear onto its hind legs while falling to one knee, courtesy of the witcher's work on the muscle there, and opened up its chest to the archer.

Arrow eight and nine slid through ribs, punching through its remaining good lung and its liver, all but doing the beast in. Arrow number ten finished it, plowing right through its heart.

The house sized beast hit the asphalt, lion sized beast mounted atop it. The manticore let loose a roar that rebounded through the town, and Shepard merely let out a sigh as he leaned back against the dumpster.

"Just another day."

 **Hey guys! Let me know what's up! You like this, don't, think I'm stupid? Let me know! Just please don't tell me it sucks and not say why. I've had that on other stories and it's basically killed them.**


	11. Chapter 11

**Short and not very good, but I had to get it out, went too long, and my schedule was hell. Kind of lost track in this chapter, hope to get back there next time.**

Jared grunted as he felt another spike hit him, this one finding a crease in his armor near the shoulder and managing to just barely punch through the skin and inject its venom. Most people would been sent to the ground merely from the impact of the twelve inch, razor sharp, shard of carapace ripping through armor and muscle. The Bear was not so concerned.

Many more, even krogans, would have been taken down in seconds by the thick green liquid pumping through their veins. Jared couldn't care less.

Almost anyone out there, surely, would have been terrified of the three meter long, quarter ton insect decked in thick armor plating, armed with two, long, sharp, and powerful claws and a long tail tipped with loose barbs dripping the thick green venom currently passing through the huge witcher. He just sighed at the tediousness of it all.

Jared ripped the spike out of his shoulder and brandished his sword, Olaf, a forty eight inch silver/meteorite blade that was broader than the average man's hand. The endrega in front of him, a model of the species never seen before, though that was not surprising considering their adaptability and short lived generations, continued to hiss as it squared off with him, circling around and keeping the witcher's attention as its companions did their best to encircle him, they were trying to take the initiative from him.

Well there was an easy remedy for that.

The Bear surged forward with a roar, spinning his long blade in an arc and bringing it about as the endrega swung its tail around, and severed the barbed appendage, yellow blood spraying from the end, and continued with his momentum, stomping on the head of the insectoid, Jared's prodigious weight crushing through the organic armor with a loud crunch.

Of course, like many insects, endrega didn't actually keep its brain inside its head, instead choosing to keep it inside the much more protected midsection, which was no problem for Olaf as it easily punched through the carapace and skewered the only vital organ the creature had.

Jared's fingers twisted, flashing purple and casting a line across the ground with hourglass shaped runes framing the barrier. It had the desired effect of slowing down, even stopping some, of the smaller, lighter, and no less deadly insectoids charging him from the right. Of course that still left the ones charging him from the left, but a flash of silver had Olaf swinging around to completely bisect one of the leaping endrega.

Another swipe split one open, spilling nearly the entirety of the unfortunate monster's blood across the ground, and as the last one leapt for the massive mutant's throat, an armored gauntlet snatched it from the air, holding the meter long, beetle like creature for a second, before Jared smashed it to the ground, unnatural strength crushing the bug flat.

A twitch from the side reminded the Bear that the remaining four endrega were not going to stay ensconced within the bounds of Yrden for long, so he drew his sidearm.

Well, the five barreled Jackhammer wasn't technically a sidearm, Jared just treated it like one.

Hypersonic, sand grain sized particles perforated the creatures. No need for silver in this case, as the insectoids were immune to the poisoning effect anyway, and while mass accelerators might not do as much flesh damage as the larger, slower chemically propelled weapons, they were much better at penetrating thick, hardened armor. That and not many things were able to stand up the sheer number of projectiles the Jackhammer was able to put out there, particularly when Jared was hammering the trigger as quickly as he was, on targets that were still held either motionless, or were moving as though they were under water.

When Yrden finally wore off, all that happened were the pieces left of the large, beetle like insects were allowed to fly apart as quickly as the laws of physics intended.

"How's it going up there?" the giant witcher rumbled into the comms.

" _I'm almost done!_ " Arysa, his asari commando 'guide' bit back, annoyed. At him, or the system, he wasn't sure, but it was funny all the same.

"Want to switch spots?" he grunted as he slapped Olaf on his back and leveled the Jackhammer, readying for another wave of the nearly endless horde of insects, "You can hold of the endrega, I'll try and hack the mechs? Can't be that hard."

" _You have no idea how hard this is! There are seven security layers, each with six encryptions keys and each one requires a different handshake than the last!_ "

Jared walked over to his discarded heavy machine gun, a six barreled rotary gun affectionately called the Vomit Canon, due to the sound the weapon made when it was fired at full speed, and put the Jackhammer back on the magnetic plate on his thigh.

"Did you try using an algorithm?"

"… _What do you think hacking is like? Do you think I'm up here, typing equations into a little screen and sending it out there to do work? No, I'm trying to fool this security system into thinking that I'm an authorized…_ " Arysa paused, no doubt picking up on the sound of tumbling boulders that was Jared's laughter coming over the comm line, " _Oh. You're fucking with me._ "

Setting his feet as the wall of insectoids lined up, barreling down the tunnel created by their expansive hive, the smaller, beetle like ones leading the way, with the larger, scorpion ones following behind. So far those had been the only two castes of endrega to confront the pair, though they had proven themselves dangerous enough.

The base they were currently at had been home to a garrison of Eclipse mercenaries who had been hired by the Republics to police the system and prevent any slavers, however unlikely, from making a run at the colony, as was standard practice for the asari government when it came to colonies firmly within their territory. There had been over two thousand mercenaries at this base, all well armed, both in terms of small arms and armor, and in terms of bigger hardware. The mainly asari force had four tanks fitted with anti armor and anti personnel weaponry, they had turrets surrounding their encampment, they even had a well developed air field from which shuttles, fighters, and gunships could land and take off from at will.

All of that had been useless when the endrega, attracted by the vibrations of the landing craft, had dug right up in the center of their encampment, flooding the Eclipse sisters with numbers and vicious resolve.

Holding the Vomit Canon at his hip, Jared thumbed the trigger, watching as the barrel spun up to speed even as the horde of endrega tore towards him. The sound of a vomiting slyzard filled the tunnel even as sand grain sized projectiles raced down it. The front end of the wave was immediately curbed by the immense firepower, and the dead bodies at the front served to slow down the number behind them.

This wave seemed a little bigger than the last. The hive was large, both in population and size, but bigger in size by far, which was a disservice when it came to the insectoids ability to defend it from intruders. It meant the endrega were only able to respond in waves, but the fact that each wave seemed a little larger than the last, seemed to be an indication that the queen of this hive was learning that she needed more numbers. That was just fine with Jared, particularly since they all decided to run at him, basically single file, down a long tunnel, rather than dig around the tunnel, and attack Arysa where she was, in the underground storage garage right behind him.

The Vomit Canon beeped at him, letting the Bear know he needed to relent on the trigger pressure for a little bit, allowing the weapon to vent its heat. The weapon was overpowered, but it couldn't be fired for long or it would melt the barrel right into slag, and blow up in his hands, but that is why Jared always came prepared, as he reached down and pulled a pair of blue bombs from his belt, and flung it down the tunnel, right into the maw of the onrushing endrega.

Two explosions expanded along the ranks of the insectoids, but rather than ripping them apart in a hail of shrapnel, or burning them to ash, frost encased the exoskeletal creatures, freezing their joints and covering their bodies in ice, completely immobilizing the front ranks that had only just crawled over the bodies of their fellows, and were now so brittle, that as the ones from behind pushed past their frozen comrades, the ice shrouded insects were shattered under the pressure.

The Vomit Canon was overheated, and the two Northern Wind bombs' effect had already worn off, but it had already reduced the wave of insectoids to a handful of charging creatures, but a pittance when pitted against Olaf.

" _Got 'em!_ " Arysa said as the garage door opened and revealed on one side an entire platoon of LOKI mechs, a dozen FENRIR doglike mechs, and one giant YMIR mech at the back. The light blue asari commando ran to the front of the group, her Hexer in her right hand, and biotics flaring in her left, both were replaced by the surprise in her eyes as she saw what was on Jared's side of the door.

"I see that," he rumbled nonchalantly, the barbed tail of a scorpion like endrega in his left hand as the creature itself struggled to pull away from the iron grasp of the Bear. Jared lifted the tail up and swung it around, smashing the insectoid into the ground, then tossing its corpse onto the pile of corpses. In fact there were many piles of corpses around the giant witcher.

"Did you find out where we need to go?"

"Um…" the huntress shook her head and got back into business mode, "Yeah, we need to go down another three levels, the main reactor is down there, but I discovered something else, too."

Jared put Olaf back in its sheath and then slung the Vomit Canon around his back before pulling the Jackhammer back out, "What's that?"

"Two levels down, there's the main computer bank, it has a direct link to a network of communication terminals in every settlement on the colony," the commando said as she began walking down the tunnel where the skittering of distant insects echoed, "It's currently shut down, but if we can reactivate it, I can activate every communication terminal in the settlements."

"Will it still work when we blow it up?"

"The terminals in the settlements will still work, but they won't be networked, we'll have to manually do that as each one becomes available."

The Bear grunted as they reached the crusted over elevator shaft leading deeper down into the underground portion of the base. The door control didn't work, but Jared figured they might not really need the door anyway, and simply punched the steel framed door, pushing his meaty fist through the crust and steel, and revealing the sterile elevator within, "Why will these work, when our comms don't work more than three miles out?"

"They're hardlined," she explained, "Apparently the sun acted up a few centuries ago, solar flares, knocked out all wireless communication, but the hardlines buried underground kept in insulated pipes, worked just fine, so they hardlined a terminal in every settlement to a grid, and set up the control processor here. That's actually why the Eclipse set up their base here."

Jared then nodded to the army of mechs that had been following them blindly, "What about them? Can't fit in the elevator."

Arysa smiled, "Distraction."

The commando then conjured her omnitool, pressed a button, and turned to the mechs, who all immediately armed their weapons and scattered through the various side tunnels dug by the endrega.

The huge witcher nodded, then stepped into the elevator, followed by the huntress, "Just so you know, they'll get bigger the further down we go."

"… What?"

…

Antoine's fingers were a maelstrom as they danced back and forth, forming Signs by the second at a rate that was the calling card of the School of the Griffin. So advanced was their practice in the arts of the latent energy between universes the layman might go so far as to call magic, though the very label of magic was, of course, ridiculous. It was merely an energy that was not of this world, and therefore was under no obligation to heed to the basically understood laws of physics. Source's such as him were able to pull the energy directly from the Space Between, while others were required to use what was leaking through, little by little.

There were no power limits imposed upon the Griffin, however, as waves of Igni scoured waves of necrophages that had taken over the food processing plant, and trapping a group of civilians that had thought to take refuge inside the fortified building. It wasn't a bad choice, the walls were thick, there was a good stock of food present inside, they even still had power and clean water.

The problem lay in the fact that a large gathering of warm bodies inevitably attracted necrophages, and the damned things never ran alone.

A dose of Aard flung a leaping ghoul backwards into a concrete pillar, breaking its back. A dash of Igni triggered the explosive reaction of a rotfiend, which in turn, had rather undesirable effects upon its comrades.

Witcher Signs were useful, if basic, and were specifically designed to be most effective against monsters, which was why Griffin witchers studied the Signs to such an extravagant degree. Antoine himself had spent over a decade training with the Signs. Griffins didn't graduate their training until they were nearly thirty as compared to the other Schools, that would send eighteen, nineteen, and twenty year olds out into the world of monster slaying.

Not to say those witchers went out unprepared, but a Griffin's skillset was a bit more particular than others, and their ability to manipulate cosmic energy quite a bit more advanced than theirs, and it extended beyond witcher Signs.

Ripping out his sword, a thirty two inch silver/meteorite blade, and held it in both hands, focusing the powers of the very fabric of reality upon the fine edge, which soon glowed an ominous red, blasting off heat and crackles of energy.

The flood of necrophages pouring through the overhead door at the front of the loading bay did not pause at the sight of the eerie light, that would turn out to be a mistake.

Antoine cut the sword horizontally, hitting nothing but air, though the blade wasn't meant to touch anything. Red lightning lashed out along the arc of the sword, cutting through the ranks of ghouls, rotfiends, and drowners. One particularly bloated rotfiend was torn apart by its own internal pressure caused by the gasses of decomposing meat that its torso was actually flung across the loading bay. A ghoul, perhaps thinking itself more intelligent than its flesh hungry brethren, ducked its head down, the only problem was the way it stuck its rear high in the air.

As the edge of the wave was blunted, the Griffin turned the blade over and pointed the tip at a burly drowner, a lance of red energy boring through its soft chest and splitting it open. The bronze skinned witcher then turned Opinicus and actually used it for its intended purpose, and splayed open the ghoul that had its hind legs cut off by the first wave of magical energy.

Again, Antoine used the blade as a scepter, sweeping the end over the crowd of lowly necrophages and spread red death amongst their ranks. Crimson lightning cut through soft, rotted flesh with ease, dropping bodies missing limbs, heads, even the top halves of their torsos.

" _They're coming out of the woodwork out here,_ " Laira's voice sounded in his ear, punctuated by the boom of her shotgun, " _Where are they all coming from?_ "

Good question, one Antoine would like answered as Opinicus dimmed down to its previous silver shine, though it was no less deadly as it nipped the head right off a rotfiend, expelling its obnoxious gas that was more than enough to knock out a krogan. To be fair, the witcher did sniffle in disgust.

There had been two dozen at the most of the corpse eaters hanging around the plant, he and the commando had already dispatched twice that number, and still they emerged from the forest, racing out of the pale white trunks and navy blue foliage. It was possible they had naturally congregated there, due to the high availability of animals to hunt within the alien jungle, but on a planet as saturated by magic as this one had been, a leshen would have formed to combat the monsters. Something was preventing that, likely the source of the cosmic energies itself. More and more, this entire situation was looking manufactured.

Another wave of Igni culled the next wave of carrion feeders, and Antoine took a moment to consider their current predicament.

"Laira, can you get to the garage?"

" _What? Why?_ "

The witcher sighed as he cast a line of Yrden upon the ground and pulled out Hellfire, a thirty caliber caseless submachine gun designed by the School of the Griffin for crowd control of large groups of nekkers, necrophages, and harpies, "Because there might be a vehicle inside the garage, hopefully something we can fit all of these people into, so we can get them out of here."

" _Okay, it's on the north side of the plant, there's a lot of open ground between us and it. That'd be quite a risk for something that's not a guarantee._ "

"Could _we_ make it?"

The huntress' voice came back a little disturbed at the implication, " _You want to leave these people here? Alone?_ "

"I want to take them with us," he grunted in response as the Hellfire sputtered in his hand, dropping a couple of the corpse feeders, "I'll grab the monsters' attention, pull them out onto the south side, you and the civilians make a run for the garage."

" _That's suicide!_ "

"Seen worse, go, I'm about to make a lot of noise."

Samum was an incredibly useful bomb, significantly more effective than the Alliance military issued flashbang. Not only was it capable of permanently blinding those who were caught with eyes wide open, not only did it absolutely shatter eardrums of those too close to it, but it had terrible effects upon monsters. Fiends would permanently lose their third eye, draconids would be too disoriented to fly, vampires would suffer severe burns that hampered their ability to fight as effectively. But when it came to necrophages, all the bomb could do was turn their head.

The flash didn't hurt their eyes, the bang didn't cause their ears to bleed, and the small, hot shards of silver that filled the air were, at worst, a mild irritant. The shrapnel was too small to cause any damage, and necrophages don't feel pain, regardless of its source. But they all heard it, they all saw it, they all felt it, and like a moth drawn to flame, they were drawn to its source.

As Antoine slipped Hellfire back in its holster, and clenched his left fist in a blue fire, Opinicus slithered from its sheath, already regaining an eerie, bloody red. Dozens of soulless, blank eyed, emaciated carrion feeders were charging in on him, flooding out of the concrete building and pouring out of the forest, ravenous and rabid. The Griffing cracked his neck, Laira could take her time.

He needed the exercise.

…

Bayak ducked underneath a spray of green acid, bending backwards and dropping to his knees on the dirt road to slide under the stream of steaming liquid and popping back up to his feet and continuing his frighteningly speedy dash through the dirt roads of the mining community.

Steady thumping told the Viper that his pursuer was still giving chase, but that she was also falling behind, he'd have to slow down and let the forktail catch up, lest she take to the wing. This particular draconid might not be the greatest flyer, but presumably she could still travel through the air faster than Bayak could with his own feet, even if the average Viper was faster than a horse.

High skies, little competition, and large local wildlife had allowed the forktail chasing him to grow as large as a tank, and about as aerodynamic as one. Still, a fat forktail was fast enough to chase down any human or asari on foot.

Bayak took a hard left down a cramped alley way between the two bare timber buildings, one a sleeping barrack and the other a bar. The space was too narrow for the forktail to follow, at least not without plowing right through the hard wooden planks as though they were twigs, which it did. Large, toothy jaws snapped futilely, as the splintered walls slowed the beast down just enough to keep it out of reach of the dark skinned witcher.

" _Take a right._ "

The Viper planted his left foot into the dirt, and with unnatural speed and agility, took off down a wider gravel road. His pursuer was not as fleet of foot as he, however, and the fat forktail slid on the loose gravel, slamming into the stone building at the far end of the road before giving the running witcher a roar of frustration.

" _She looks like she might give up on you._ "

A large, thirteen millimeter pistol leapt into Bayak's hands, and the Hexer squeezed off three rounds, pounding into the reptile's thick hide, chipping away at the scales, but ultimately doing little more than causing pain, and got the draconid's to refocus, let all of its frustration and desire to quite slide right off, and let out a bellowing cry of rage.

" _You make a great first, second, third impression don't you?_ "

"How far am I?"

Deela somehow managed to communicate a shrug through audio comms, " _Dunno, half kilometer? Quarter kilometer? Depends on how many turns you have to make_?"

"Direction?"

" _North._ "

Bayak slammed through the locked door of a store, leapt over the counter, smashed through the door leading into the store room, and then leapt through the glass window into the street behind it. The Viper hadn't taken more than a dozen steps when the stone walls of the building blew out, as the fat forktail came roaring through, its mouth bleeding from the gums at the impact, but fury still guiding the aggressive female.

" _Was that necessary? That was a nice building."_

Ignoring the commando who was watching from on high through a sniper scope, the witcher slid underneath a steel wagon filled with ore and popped up on the other side as the fat draconid slammed the steel cart and threw it to the side, bellowing after lightly armored witcher. Bayak's destination was dead ahead, only a hundred meters from him, a huge stone arena, made from the rocks the asari had once pulled ore from, and that had only a few short months ago hosted sports games that people from all over the planet had once attended. Apparently humans had brought baseball to Elutania, and the population had promptly fallen in love with it.

Now, however, the stadium lied empty, aside from a set of thick iron chains Bayak and Deela had set up prior to luring the large female forktail out of her lair in the mine. The chains had been part of a display in the town museum, a piece of ancient machinery, but fortunately the local population hadn't argued when the Viper had ripped the thick, heavy links from the ancient machinery and hauled them off to the stadium and anchored them deep into the stony ground.

The witcher flew out of the narrowed door and into the stands surrounding the field, which was even currently set up for a baseball game, and was followed by the fat forktail, the corpulent reptile ripping through the stone wall and chased Bayak down the stands and onto the blue grass and brown dirt. The moment of her triumph was near, her salivating jaws getting closer and closer to the fleet figure, her eyes fixed on her target…

The fat forktail stumbled and tripped and fell over on second base, a white haze over its eyes, vertical pupils covered by a triangular rune. Wings flapped, its tail flailed wildly, and her legs churned against nothing as the large forktail rolled onto its side and its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth.

Bayak's boot pressed down on the draconid's lower jaw, as a gloved hand pulled up on the upper jaw, extending the predator's formidable jaws as wide as her tendons would allow, before reaching in with a razor sharp knife and reaching into her throat.

" _Ew… that can't smell good…_ "

Deela was not incorrect as the forktail huffed and puffed through Axii, trying to break the spell. Rotten meat clung between the beast's crocodile teeth, and the worst sort of bile was expelled from deep within the creature's gut with each exhale. Fortunately, the Viper's target was easy to find, and easier to cut out.

Even through Axii, the forktail was able to feel the stainless steel blade cutting through her tonsils, forcing Bayak to be a little more forceful as he held the mouth open, lest he be crushed by the huge jaws. Three quick cuts to each, and the witcher was able to let the reptile's mouth snap shut as he tossed both tonsils, and the acid glands attached, to the side. Just in time for the beast to regain control of her mind.

The draconid stumbled to her feet, pained whimpers accentuating her every movement until she finally reached her full, impressive height, and let out an ear shattering… confused… grunt… The monster looked down to her feet to see a thick iron band wrapped around her right ankle. The band was attached to a very formidable looking black iron chain.

This time the forktail did manage a roar, in anger, as it directed its rage towards the Viper that had clasped its ankle in the heavy duty shackle, and lunged for him. Bayak rolled underneath the reptile's jaws, and reached for the second band. The beast made the foolish mistake of trying to crush him with her free foot, and soon found herself bound on both ankles.

The Viper dashed toward the pitcher's mound, the great beast gave chase, but found that the chains had their limits, and found herself slammed into the ground as her feet were taken out from underneath her. She wasn't even given a chance to try and regain them, however, as another thick iron chain was thrown over her back, just behind her wings, and the other end was taken by the witcher and was quickly attached to the anchor embedded all the way through the dirt and to the stone beneath, the Viper rapidly spinning the handle on the ratchet wench to tighten the chain, and pin the female to the grass.

" _So, not that I'm not impressed and definitely not that I'm not turned on by that display, explain to me why we had to go to these lengths to capture the dragon thing, and not just kill it outright?"_

"Forktails are fucked up. Females carve out huge territories, containing dozens of males inside these boundaries, but not because females are naturally larger, or more dominant," the Viper explained as he walked over to Homeplate, and the long case he had set there, "They do that because only one in five eggs laid are female."

The case flipped open, revealing a shining Black Hornet Sniper Rifle, "The males compete for the right to mate with the female, but work together to ensure the female's survival. Which means whenever she's in trouble, whenever she's injured, whenever she's trapped, she'll…"

Bayak was cut off by a stupendously loud wail from the trapped beast, it's corpulent form struggling in vain against chains designed to hold under stresses far greater than the beast could generate.

"Which mean's she'll call out for help."

The asari commando appeared in the stands behind Homeplate, "So she's bait?"

The Viper flipped up the heavy rifle, four eight round magazines attached to the stock, two on either side, and flipped it to the huntress, who deftly caught it with some assistance from her biotics.

"They'll be here in an hour," he ripped two short silver/dimeritium swords from his back, "Cover me when they do."

…

"Hold, witcherses!"

Garth let out a groan as he heard the rocky voice in barely understandable common. He'd rather fight a giant clan than reason with trolls.

"Bersiness what have there?"

"What did that talking boulder say?" Captain Nirissa asked the Old Wolf as the pair looked at the ramshackle wall erected around the small town.

The elder witcher sighed and replied, "He wants to know what business we have here… Want to enter the town!"

The giant rock monster cocked its head atop the wall essentially made out of garbage, "EeeEeEeerm… Grogg sure not! Drack sometimes angergets."

"Drack?" the captain whispered as both non monsters stared up at the very, very ugly monster, "Is that the troll in charge?"

"That's not a troll name," Garth whispered back before shouting up to the troll, "Are there people in this town?"

The troll nodded excitedly, shaking its entire body up and down with its enthusiasm, "Peepuhl lots! Peepuhl blueses, peepuhl tallses, peepuhl pretteses… like Grogg!"

The Old Wolf closed his eyes and shook his head to clear the mental image of a person as ugly as this Grogg, "Yes you're very handsome, are these people… alive?"

"Drack… angergets, when tries to eats… trolls do peoples."

"Did he just say, that their leader gets angry when he and, presumably other trolls, try to eat people?"

"They like to make a big stew if they can, levo, dextro, pure poision, doesn't matter to them, if they can boil it in water and shove it down their throat, they'll love it," the elderly witcher answered, "Can we see these people?"

"EeeEeeEeeEeerRrRrrrrrm… Drack! Drack know what do! Drack… find me!"

"What in my itchy, scaled quad is going on out here?"

Nirissa snorted, "So Drack's a krogan."

A huge, ancient looking krogan appeared along the wall next to the troll. Like most reptilians, krogan never really stopped growing. Their growth rate slowed down once they reached maturity, but it never stopped, and as a result, one of the easiest ways to tell ancient krogan apart from younger ones, was sheer mass, and this one was a giant among his kind. Which meant he positively looked like a midget next to Grogg.

"Who, in the name of Verune, are you people?"

"I'm Captain Nirissa of Talein's Daughters, I'm here conducting reconnaissance for potential relief efforts," the near matriarch shouted up to the ancient Tuchankan, "May we come in?"

"I don't care who you are!" Drack rebutted the captain who then pointed at the witcher, "I want to know who the guy with snake eyes is!"

"Grogg know! Witcherses! Witcherses kill monsters! Drack monsters want killed! Drack hire witcherses!" Grogg seemed to have an idea come over him halfway through, something that one would normally think impossible for the lumbering brute, particularly after experiencing the exchange Garth had just been forced to sit through.

"Wait… Grogg, troll is! Troll, monsters is! Drack… want witcherses… kill Grogg?"

The old krogan shook his head in exasperation, "No Grogg, I don't want the witcher to kill you. I want him to kill that quad sucking thing living in the hills! Let em in, even the stuck up commando."

The witcher and the huntress exchanged a look, the mutant shrugging and the biotic rolling her eyes and both set forth as the ramshackle gate squealed on rusted hinges, opening at the behest of another, previously unseen troll. The gate, despite being made of cobbled together scrap metal, was still quite solid, and it couldn't be easy to move for any being, ultra strong krogan, or uber powerful biotic asari. That said, the many tons of steel was no object to the rock troll, who chose to delight in his manual labor, with what was, presumably, an uplifting song.

The town that was revealed was quite clearly, not a town, but rather what had probably once been a ghost yard for outdated shuttles, trucks, and small spaceships, lying in this part of the world waiting to be dismantled, and recycled through one of the major city's industrial plants for parts and raw materials. There were far too many people milling about the quickly assembled 'town' to have just been the people working on the junkyard, and since many were turian, human, and krogan, Garth quickly leapt to the conclusion that this was a mercenary camp, probably an attempt by the Republic to try and put boots on the ground.

Not many had survived, and they weren't in great shape, but the Old Wolf suspected that the only reason they were alive at all was thanks to Drack's ability to communicate with the rock trolls, which wasn't really much of an ability as it was more of a patience for the dumb.

Still, it wasn't something many people could do, tamping down on their fear of the ugly creatures and facing them with focus and the clarity of mind to actually interpret their barely coherent 'sentences'.

"Human's in the company have been saying we need a witcher for whatever is out there," the ancient krogan said as he descended from the garbage wall, "I told them to shut their mouths, find their quads, and go out there."

Old eyes closed as the sharply crested head shook back and forth, "Had to listen to their screams all night."

Knowing exactly where this was going, Garth simply decided to get straight to the point, "So it likes to take its time, what else can you tell me? Any eyewitness accounts?"

"Anyone who's seen it is dead, even the trolls, tough fuckers though they are," Drack explained, "Seen some tracks out there though and… well, they look human or asari, with that weird sole shape you got and the five toes…"

"But…"

"But they're fucking huge! I could fill it with water and wash my ass in those things. That's when we found this place, the trolls were ripping apart the old junk heaps here and trying to build a wall. Said they needed a castle to protect them from the forest, like it was the most obvious thing in the world," the massive reptile shrugged his shoulders, "I mean, who would look at a pile of junk and think, 'well I'll just build myself a castle'?"

Trolls were like that, they liked to build things, specifically they liked to imitate humans and their constructions. Normally they preferred to use stones, or at least rock trolls did, but they were just as adept at ripping steel apart and setting the chunks on top of each other.

"So… what?" Nirissa asked from her spot standing to the side, "There's just some sort of bigfoot walking around in the forest out there?"

"It's either a giant, or a cyclops, I'll need more before I know which one, though I'm leaning towards giant, cyclops typically make shoes for themselves out of the corpses of their victims," the elderly witcher said, "Can you tell me anything more about it? Have you gone out to look at the bodies, have you seen the sites of the attacks?"

"Nah, we can hear the rutting beast stomping around at night, I order lights out at sunset every day just to keep from attracting it, and I don't want to run the risk of sending people out there, only for them to run right back here, leading it right to us."

The Old Wolf nodded, "Smart, do you know where your men went and where they might have been attacked?"

The krogan turned and barked at a passing turian, "Kryxen! Get the tracker pad from Central and bring it over to the West Tower!" he then turned back to the witcher and the commando, "Our company fitted us with dead man switches. They lock in the coordinates wherever one of us dies. GPS doesn't fucking work, but it'll still tell us the direction, and how far they are."

"Us?"

The ancient reptile chuckled lowly, "Correction… you. I'm not going out there to get shit out by some overgrown ape."

The Old Wolf shrugged and turned to Nirissa, "Stay here, I'll be back in an hour, maybe two."

…

"I don't think I've ever encountered an elevator that was obviously faster than stairs," Garrus Vakarian muttered as the cavern shook around the squad and their kind of, sort of, not really, prisoner.

"Seriously," Jane Shepard agreed with a short nod, checking her rifle for the hundredth time, knowing full well that if the volcano went off there was not a damned thing mass accelerator rounds could do about it, "I would go for a ladder even."

"We're gonna die down here," Wrex grumbled as a frighteningly large rock struck the Prothean lift, shattering against the hard metal, and shaking the ground.

Kaidan, on the other hand, was leaning against the center console of the lift quite nonchalantly, "Well… I'll survive."

Everyone stared, "I've got just enough power to produce a shield around myself and propel it to the surface in the event lava starts pouring in… But I'd really miss you guys… Except maybe Garrus."

"Hey!"

"There's nothing wrong with my hair!" the sorcerer barked at the indignation of the turian marksman, "Just cause you've got those ugly frills doesn't mean you get to just mock my coiffed perfection."

"Did you just use the phrase 'coiffed perfection'?" Shepard asked with a tinge of wonder in her voice, "I'm definitely going to have to demote you, you may get kicked off the team."

"Goddess will you people stop bickering!"

The N7, the sorcerer, the ex-cop, and the mercenary looked at their prisoner/not a prisoner Liara T'Soni, "No, shut up."

The lift stopped, having finally reached the top, the way out clearly marked by the lights on the walls, the tiles on the floor, and the nine foot tall figure in a dark, tattered cloak standing at it.

"Ah now who the hell's this?"

 **I am sorry for the abrupt ending, but it will be covered in the next chapter, and I kind of want you to stew on it. This chapter is short, mostly due to the fact my schedule has been on the fritz lately. I've been travelling all over the States the past few weeks, and I haven't really had a chance to write.**

 **Sorry about that, leave a comment, know that I'll try and find the time to make sure the next chapter doesn't suck as much.**


	12. Chapter 12

Geth troopers filed out of the hallway behind the figure in black robes, none of them with weapons, and all with their normal blue eyes replaced by eerie red lights that formed the shape of pentagrams. The robotic quarianoids lined up against the walls of the circular room surrounding the elevator platform, assuming a stance akin to a congregation in prayer. Red, tattered robes clung to their mechanical frames, barely covering any of the battered armor and sparking circuitry, the rough spun cloth dripping red dye, blood red dye… it was blood. The robots were wearing bloody rags over their damaged forms and staring over folded hands with an eye in the shape of a pentagram.

Wonderful.

A series of hand gestures by Shepard told the rest of the crew to keep their eyes trained on the figure in the middle, the geth weren't the threat here. Jane had enough experience in her years as an N7 dealing with cultists. The fact the cultists were robots was new, but the basic architecture of the current cult was the same. A bunch of fools who had created something they thought they could control, and found themselves thralls of their very own demonic servant.

The volcano rumbled, but she paid it no mind as she spoke, "You recognize this thing, Lieutenant?"

The sorcerer replied in the negative, "Never seen anything like it, Commander, the power coming off of it… Demonic, and we're not talking about summoned energy, that's an actual demon trapped in corporeal form."

"Plan?" Wrex rumbled as he subtly shifted to the front of the group, shotgun never straying from the giant in its black cloak.

"Garrus?"

"Yeah."

"Got any silver slugs for your rifle?" Jane asked quietly, the noise somehow ringing through the volcano that should have been drowning any and all noise out. Instead, the entire room was silent, even the mountain itself was still, as though nature had been quelled by the presence of the supernatural being.

"I got a stack," the turian started patting his armor and produced a single magazine, "Four rounds."

The figure rolled its shoulders and stood straighter, pulling to an ungodly large figure. The cloak fell away in some parts, revealing the caricature of a turian, though one that had been gruesomely desiccated and malformed.

"Make 'em count," the Commander said as she briefly glanced to Wrex, the silent communication doing its job as they both moved to flank the morbid fallacy of a living being, "Lieutenant, I want you too…"

The demon finally raised its head, giving the N7 her first clear view of its face, nearly causing her to drop the Pitchfork in shock.

"Nihlus?"

The creature who wore the former Spectre's face ripped off its cloak, revealing in its entirety, the mangled, grotesque, and powerful form it now possessed. Blood red fire crackled along its three fingered hands and traveled down its mutilated legs until it touched the still pristine Prothean metal floors. Then, in a quick burst of movement and display of raw power, the possessed corpse shot its hands outward, and the hellfire followed suit, spreading along the ground and through the air with a malevolent intent.

"Open fire!"

The demon was already moving, even as mass effect rounds pierced its putrid flesh. The creature felt no pain, Nihlus' face showed no discomfort, and the hellfire showed no mercy as the fists it coated lashed out towards the krogan.

Wrex had dealt enough in recent years with Post-Conjunction creatures to know that overpowering them was a quick way to die, and so the ancient battlemaster didn't make the mistake so many of his younger, and more inexperienced brethren would have, and stepped back, letting the unholy fists strike the ground and dent the solid metal floor.

He did take advantage of the momentary stillness of his opponent, and delivered an uppercut powerful enough to lift an ordinary human's head off. While not achieving the desired effect of even harming the creature, it did force the turian facsimile to expose its softer, more vulnerable midsection to a nice, even spreading of buckshot, to no effect.

The demon delivered a right cross to the scaly brow plate of the krogan, and pounded the battlemaster into the ground, leaving Wrex in a haze. Three fingered hands glowed brightly once more as hellfire gathered, but before the avatar of pure evil could unleash its unholy fury, its body was wrapped in a blue glow and lifted off the ground before another jolt of biotic energy slammed it to the ground.

Jane ripped into it with her assault rifle, the dual barrels at the bottom chattering as they peppered the hulking cadaver with automatic fire, but despite her biotic attack, and the firepower both her and Wrex had delivered to it, the creature remained unfazed as it simply held out a burning hand and sent a stream of hellfire bearing down on the N7.

A biotic barrier sprang up between Shepard and the stream of supernatural flames, but it also blocked her line of sight, which turned out to be a bad thing, for as soon as the fire dissipated, the creature wearing Nihlus' face was right on top of her, long, mangled arms swinging razor sharp claws in wide arcs, narrowly missing the biotic as she backed away, firing into the creature all the while.

The demon was fast, supernaturally so, and judging by the way Wrex was still laying on the ground, it was strong too. Combine those two things with a tenacity only achieved by a hateful spirit and the unflinching resolve granted only to the mortally challenged, Jane knew she was outclassed and outmatched. Her biotics could throw it around, her bullets could pierce its skin, but neither could hurt it in any meaningful manner. Perhaps if she had ten marines open fire on the creature at once, or if Wrex had a good chance to really open up with the Jackhammer, then they could probably do enough damage to the flesh that the creature would be immobilized.

If only she had a sword. Uncle Jon would be nice to have right about now.

A biotic push put some distance between the two combatants, and Jane took advantage to pull out a silver dirk she had taken from the witcher's armory on Bekkenstein. In a bright pulse of blue, the N7 surged forward at near supersonic speeds and plunged the blade deep into the demon's chest, and for the first time, eliciting a cry of pain. It was just unfortunate that it was followed by her own cry of pain, as the monster with Nihlus' face bestowed its own edged retribution upon her face, leaving three shallow, but painful gashes from her right eye to the left corner of her jaw.

Looming over, glowing red with blood magic and hellfire, the former Spectre prepared to crush the current one when a resounding sonic boom filled the chamber, and an explosion of cold blood erupted from one side of the monster's chest cavity, followed immediately by a flash of white light that blinded at first, but faded to reveal a holy ankh, burning into the side of the demon and immobilizing it.

A roar of pain and hate emanated from the demon, but was overshadowed by the roar of rage as Wrex, sporting a cracked brow plate and an angry glint in his eyes, wrapped the necrotic giant from behind and did something Jane had only ever seen on those terrible professional wrestling programs. The krogan suplexed it.

Stunned, and hurting for the first time in the fight, the abomination was sprawled across the ground and completely defenseless as the ancient battlemaster leapt to his feet, Jackhammer in hand, and began delivering punishment courtesy of the oversized and overpowered automatic shotgun. Pellets the size of salt grains eviscerated flesh and the ground around the monstrous form began to run black with the cool blood being violently rent from its confines.

Finally, the shotgun stopped shaking in Wrex's hands as it intoned a soft warning that the weapon had overheated and would need to cool down. The krogan stepped back, Jane giving him a concerned look over the wound on his head. The Spectre wasn't sure if he simply ignored the look, or didn't see it, but she had faith the old bastard knew his limits well enough as the four crewmembers of the Normandy, and Liara, who had hidden in the back during the violent encounter, surrounded the corpse.

"Think we got him?" Garrus asked, keeping his Black Hornet trained on the monstrous body.

"Think so," Jane said with a nod as she wiped her own blood out of her eyes, "That was a tough fight."

"Sorry we didn't interfere earlier, Commander," Kaidan apologized, "You were awfully close to that thing, and I didn't want to risk missing with my spell. It wouldn't have hurt you, but it takes a couple of minutes to prepare."

"It's alright, Lieutenant, we got-"

The five's attention was immediately brought to the geth lining the side of the room as their bodies began to violently convulse, red sparks flying off their body, and the blood that saturated their robes began dripping up, rather than down. Jane looked back to the corpse of the demon and felt her blood run cold.

"Oh fuck me."

Black blood had coalesced into the shape of a pentagram beneath the body, and was now on fire, emitting the same hellish red as the pentagrams that were branded onto the eyes of the geth.

Suddenly, a bolt of red lightning erupted from the body, and wounds healed, color returned to the disfigured flesh, and Nihlus' eyes snapped open once more, glowing bright red as the body it was attached to levitated, and turned to land on its feet.

Around the room, the geth, one by one, broke apart. Some exploded in a shower of sparks and hydraulic fluid, some were set ablaze by the evil energies that had coursed through it, and the few that weren't blown apart from the inside, or weren't engulfed in hellfire, simply crumpled under an invisible force that literally crushed them down into the size and shape of a soccer ball.

"On the bright side," Garrus shrugged with a worried smile, "He can't do it again?"

The demon reached towards the ceiling, hand crackling with hellfire, as a flickering form emerged from thin air. An ax, longer than the monster was tall, with a blade that was jagged, rusted, and cruel. When the revenant finally held the weapon, it hefted it high and let out an air splitting scream of rage and hatred.

Then a massive blue pulse slammed the demon against the back wall, embedding its huge frame into the red and black volcanic rock. The four from the Normandy turned, finding Liara glowing blue and getting ready to hit the creature again with another biotic surge of power.

"Shoot the damn thing!" Shepard barked as the asari slammed the demon back into the rock.

Four weapons opened up, peppering the form that was quickly surrounded by a wave of black smoke. Bullets whizzed through the cloud, followed by blue bolts of biotic energy and orange lightning strikes, all to the continued roar and screaming of the demon behind the opaque barrier.

Finally, Liara and Kaidan had tired out, Garrus had run out of silver slugs, and both Shepard and Wrex were forced to cool off their weapons. The smoke continued to billow around the physical conduit of evil, though the noise from the other end did finally desist. The five continued to stare as the barrier of particulates remained unchanging when the volcano decided to remind them all that despite its temporary subsidence, it was indeed, still ready to explode.

"Everyone out, go! Alenko, Vakarian, take Dr. T'soni, Wrex, you and me will hold the rear until they are out the door, then we're right behind em."

"Get no argument from me, Shepard," Garrus grunted as he hefted the exhausted archeologist over his shoulders and helped the struggling sorcerer to his feet.

The trio were quickly out and the N7 and battlemaster were following just as quickly when the barrier dissipated, and out stepped a battered, but still very functional demonic creature wearing a former Spectre's face. Jane was already at the threshold when it moved to the center of the room and made eye contact with the commander.

The mountain rumble and rocks fell from the ceiling, but she was rooted to her spot as the monster pointed towards her, hands crackling with hellfire, and simply vanished into thin air.

"Shepard, let's go!"

…

" _Wolf 1 has linked up with a surviving mercenary group in the north eastern hemisphere, Griffin One saved a small group of civilians and are holding up in a town on the coastline of the south western continent,_ " the audio report intoned through the terminal Cora Harper had set up in what passed for a central command center.

Basically, it was the old events center that hadn't been secure enough without power for the survivors to take refuge in. Now that Kara had brought Shepard's personal ship in, parked it on the roof, and hooked it up to the building's power grid, the previously dirty and scared people of Ly'A's Point were enjoying the wonders of modernity for the first time in months. A few who were freshly bathed were in the room with Cora as she listened to the report, but the more were out with Shepard, patrolling the town and attempting to establish a perimeter that they could maintain themselves.

" _Bear One has activated the hardlinked communication platforms around the planet, Skyhook will drop instruction packets to connect each terminal. The activation and connection of these terminals is an added priority, secondary status. Viper One is in the mountains in the eastern continent and has secured the only prominent settlement in the region."_

"Actual progress," Moren breathed next to the blonde human, "Goddess its been so long since we heard from anyone in the outside world, but all we had heard before was defeat after defeat. Now there is victory, even as minor as four little towns in the middle of nowhere."

" _Wolf Two, primary objective remains the space port one hundred sixteen kilometers north of your current position, secondary objectives; execution of any hostile Post-Conjuction Creatures, the rescue and safety of any survivors, the activation and connection of any hardlinked terminals."_

The interface's audio terminated as the audio report wrapped up, the display shifting to show the instructions for activating the hardwired comm terminals, which Cora downloaded with a wave of her omnitool. She had to find Shepard, they were going to have to leave soon, but they also had to make sure these people could take care of themselves, or else everything they had done would be for nothing. The witcher was out there right now, trying to make sure they could handle being alone, now that the presence of the fiend wouldn't keep any necrophages away. His ship had come with an impressive armory, and the experienced monster hunter was laying them out on defensive positions, how to funnel any monsters towards defensive positions, where to shoot different monsters, and how to hunt and move through territory infested with monsters.

It didn't take the commando long to find the dark haired mutant, he was right in the middle of the street underneath one of the terrestrial vehicles, apparently done having shown the civilians what they needed to know.

"How was the briefing?" Shepard asked without even looking at her, something that still unsettled Harper. How sensitive was his hearing that he could tell who was walking up on him based solely on their footsteps and rate of breath?

"Wasn't much of one, just an update on the other teams after I uploaded our own update, and a new objective."

The man rolled underneath the vehicle, taking a wrench with him, "New objective? Saving the planet not good enough for these people?"

"Well the new objective is supposed to help us do that," Cora informed him, "There are hardlinked comm terminals in nearly every settlement, apparently as a result of some nasty solar flares a century or so ago, it knocked out all wireless communications, so the colony decided they at least needed contact with each other."

"Fortuitous… are you kidding me?"

"Shepard?"

The man popped back out from under the vehicle and grabbed another wrench, "I can't believe they built these things with standard hardware. A human vehicle, I could see needing a five eighths wrench, especially if its older, but an asari swamp bug?"

The huntress looked over the vehicle the witcher was working on. It was smaller than most around the area, not meant for hauling any huge cargoes, or pulling any farming equipment, it was clearly built for speed. As a result, the thing was built low to the ground, standing just a little taller than the blonde herself, even with its ridiculously oversized wheels that were practically the entire height of the vehicle. Still, it had a bed on the back, big enough to throw the corpse of a decently sized monster onto it, and the cab was more than enough for four people to sit comfortably.

"Is that what this thing is called?"

"Until I rename it," the Wolf said as he rolled back out, reaching out with oil stained hands to grab a large blue cap with threads on what looked like a fluid connection, "If I can fix it anyway."

"Didn't know you were a mechanic."

"Like old Master Garth says, 'A witcher must be a master of all things, and a novice in none, for the first challenge he faces that he cannot overcome, will kill him shortly.'"

An oil stained, calloused hand appeared again, "I think I've got the oil pump fixed, can you hand me one of those powercells? The D12's."

Harper slapped the long, and dimly glowing, powercell into the dirty palm and watched as it promptly disappeared, "So is that what you're doing with this thing? Keeping your mechanic skills sharp?"

"Thought we might make use of it," there was some clanging underneath the swamp bug, and some mild cursing before the witcher continued, "Be nicer than walking through mosquito ridden swamps for fifty kilometers. It has a nice, powerful two way radio, so we could keep in contact with the town within a hundred kilos."

The commando nods and concedes the point, "It'd be useful."

Shepard rolled out and hopped to his feet, "That's the hope."

The witcher popped the hatch on the crew bay and leaned over the front end of the vehicle, reaching down towards the starter. The vehicle's lights turned on and there was a low growl from the vehicle itself as the powercell Cora had handed the mutant jumpstarted the reactor within the swamp bug.

"Perfect!"

The growl choked off and there was a loud clang from under the vehicle and the previously 'jubilant' monster slayer visibly slumped.

"Piece of junk, gods damned tranny dropped out on me, didn't she?"

A wry smile worked its way onto Cora's face at the sight of the witcher leaning up against the swamp bug shaking his head. It was still hard for the commando to interpret his facial expressions, despite having spent nearly a week on the ship going through meetings and training sessions with the monster hunter, and the past two days working in the field with him. This was one of the first times where she could see genuine frustration coming from the man, despite the fact that all he had was a small downturn on the corners of his mouth.

Shepard bent down to look under vehicle, all the while muttering, "Don't be the tranny, don't be the tranny."

"Gods dammit."

Harper let loose a huff of laughter and settled into a full blown smile, "Tranny?"

The witcher sighed, "Yeah… so what did you want to talk about?"

The biotic got on the ground with him, pulling herself underneath the swamp bug and finding a long metal part laying on the ground, the bolt holes that were supposed to hold it to the frame were tinged with rust, the bolts completely corroded over and laying on the ground snapped in half. The man himself was messing with what looked like exposed gears.

"Our next step, and if we can count on these people to be safe when we move on," Cora said as she stared at the part, "Also, what is a tranny?"

Viper eyes looked sharply at her at the last question before rolling and the witcher answered with a grumble, "Young people."

Shepard pulled a tray full of hardware towards him and began sizing the bolts he would need to reattach the 'tranny' back to the frame of the vehicle, "Tranny is short for transmission. Its how the swamp bug changes gears."

"Why would it need to change gears?"

"I keep forgetting that you've never been alive for piston driven engines. The reactor is constantly turning a set of twenty pistons, that is turning a shaft, so the engine is constantly producing power. The transmission lets the driver control how much torque, and in what direction. Higher the gear, the more torque but also more energy per RPM, lower the gear, the less torque, but less energy required per RPM."

The blonde shrugged, "Okay… What are RPM's?"

The Wolf sagged in frustration before picking himself back up and deciding on the bolt size, "Assuming I can get this thing running by tonight, we leave tomorrow morning after getting some sleep. Town to the northeast, thirty kilometers. Trails in the grass seem to be headed in that direction."

"Trails in the grass?"

"You didn't notice? How there were those huge swaths of grass that had been trampled down?" he grabbed a wrench and then motioned to the transmission, "Can you lift this up?"

The biotic flashed blue, the hunk of steel mimicking her as it lifted a few inches off the ground, where Shepard grabbed the now weightless part and moved it into position, "I didn't realize they were trampled, I guess I just didn't really think about it."

"Never take your environment for granted," he positioned a few of the gears and the mechanical connections to better fit within the space on the vehicle designated for it. Honestly Cora had no clue what she was looking at, but she'd do her best to help out as she grabbed a couple of bolts and began slotting them through the boltholes and hand tightening the nut on the other side.

"Locals call them Markas, they're mammals, but apparently they don't have legs. Slow and stupid, should be easy prey for just about any monsters."

Cora frowned as she watched the witcher tighten the bolts with the torque wrench, "Then you'd think we'd have found some bodies."

"Exactly, even if they had been able to fight back, there should be monster corpses laying around, like drowners or ghouls outside a bear's cave."

"What are you thinking?"

Those snake eyes looked hard into her blue ones, never breaking contact as they stood up, their work beneath the swamp bug finished. The golden yellow irises, split in half by those viper slits, physically hurt to look at as his intensity ramped up. There was something mulling around inside his head, something he wasn't going to share with her, and something that upset him a great deal.

"I don't know," the witcher looked to the south, "… I don't know."

His hand turned the key, and the vehicle roared to life like a beast, this time there was no clanking, or grinding of parts. The entire swamp bug seemed to rumble lowly as the engine settled down, the lights shown brightly, even in the mid afternoon sun, and the cab lit up with controls and interior lighting.

"Looks like you've got it running," Cora said, unhelpfully as the man still looked contemplative as he moved around the swamp bug and yanked open an access panel, exposing what looked like a significant chunk of the internal machinery. That couldn't be the whole engine though, could it?

He pulled on a small plastic cap, revealing it to be a long metal stick, then inspected the end of it, "Oil levels are fine, dirty though, fortunately, it's got fuel, but we're going to need to refill it eventually."

"Refill it? What does it run on?"

The witcher unscrewed a yellow cap and took a sniff, "Biodiesel, I think."

"This is an internal combustion reactor?"

"Uh… yes? That's how it drives the pistons."

The biotic shook her head, "I can't believe, on an advanced asari colony, thousands of lightyears away from the Homeworld, a society that was traveling space before ours had even mastered fire, is still using… this!"

Shepard hopped into the cab, motioning for the commando to do the same. As soon as Harper was safely strapped into her seat, the big man slammed his foot down onto the accelerator, grinning as the blonde let out a shriek when she was slammed back into her chair. In her peripheral, she could see the tires throwing up smoke on the pavement as they spun briefly before getting traction and shooting the swamp bug forward.

The beast of a vehicle tore up someone's lawn as it shot between two abandoned residences, then roared proudly as it hit the street and accelerated as quickly as it could, bearing down on a turn that looked far to tight for the speeds they were currently going.

"Shepard! Slow down!"

"What was that?" Asshole. He could hear her just fine!

"Slow Down!"

To be fair, he did reach for the braking lever between them, so she felt a little better, until he yanked on both the lever, and the steering wheel, mushing the blonde against the window and causing the tires to squeal in protest. The vehicle spun sideways and threw itself down the side street and, when Shepard dropped the brake lever and hammered on the accelerator again, she could nearly feel her stomach drive up into her throat.

Again he pulled on the brake lever, this time Cora was shoved into the man's side, her cheek pressed up against his armored shoulder. Fortunately, the contact was brief, as her head was once again slammed against the headrest fixed to her seat.

The swamp bug was certainly fast, and agile, as it topped a hundred kilometers per hour all while weaving through blue leafed trees and dilapidated houses, the driver purposefully cutting as closely as he could to different obstacles. The huge tires on the outside of the vehicle chewed up the soft soil and flung dirt as they spun and tore up loose gravel, all as the engine mounted behind the pair roared and growled alternatively as the witcher played with the accelerator.

Cora continued to scream in the mutant's ear, all to his apparent amusement, the jackass. She was no stranger to fast vehicles, she had been on fighters, troop transports, and even other ground vehicles before, but they had all had mass effect cores to help stabilize their passengers. This thing did not.

It also didn't possess a significant amount of forward armor, which made it rather alarming for the blonde when she saw Shepard zero in on one particular house that had suffered greatly over the past few months. Of course, being run down, and being destroyable were not the same thing.

"Shepard!"

There was a distinct chuckling sound coming from his side of the cab, barely audible over the roaring engine.

"Shepard! You fucking ass! STOP! NO!"

The man reached onto the dash and yanked on a lever, which was followed directly by an armored sheath falling over the windshield and the sudden jerk of Cora was thrown forward in her seat, the nylon straps keeping her from slamming into the dash.

The Wolf pushed the lever back into place, the armor retracting as he did, exposing the clear, unmarred view of what was essentially the entirety of the remaining survivors, all watching wide eyed as the witcher pulled the swamp bug alongside them and finally stopped their wild ride, something the commando took immediate advantage of.

"You unbelievable ASS!" she shouted as she burst out from the door, marching away from the steel deathtrap, followed all the while by his galling chuckling.

"Come on! It wasn't that bad!"

"Fuck you!" she barked, ignoring the looks from the civilians as she stared down the smug looking witcher, "You were trying to scare me!"

The man has the unmitigated gall to look around, as though he were gathering the opinions from the crowd, before looking back to her and saying, "… yes."

"There's no way we're taking that thing tomorrow!"

"So… we'll brave the mosquitoes," she deflated a little at the mention, the welts still prominent on her neck from where the little bloodsuckers had made a meal of her, "C'mon, I'll teach you how to drive it, then you can drive us tomorrow."

"Can you teach me to drive it?"

Both human and mutant turned to the sound of a small voice, finding the youngest asari had worked up the courage to approach them, and with her wide eyes and innocent face, had already convinced the huntress to never let her anywhere near the deathtrap.

"Oh honey, you don't want to…"

The sound of a door opening turned Cora around to watch as Shepard was standing next to the rear door of the vehicle's cab, "Hop in kid, you'll go after Lieutenant Harper."

"Awesome!" the tiny blue child, who admittedly was probably thirty years older than Cora herself, despite the fact she looked twelve, climbed into the cab and sat down, where the witcher promptly strapped her in.

The man backed out and moved towards the passenger seat at the front, "Think I've got a name for this thing, too."

"Deathtrap?" the blonde grumbled as she got in the driver's seat. She looked over to the witcher and found him holding a squirming insect in his hand that he had plucked from between the dirty seats.

"I was thinking… Roach."

…

Cora Harper stumbled a little as she climbed the stone staircase to the rooftop, her legs still a little jellied up by the constant vibrations of the newly minted, and thoroughly tested, Roach. Her learning curve had been fairly smooth, able to drive it proficiently, or in Shepard's words, slightly better than his eighty six year old sister, who also happened to be blind in one eye. Jackass.

What really had her rattled, was when Shepard had let the little one take over. Dyana had taken to the controls easily, not surprising considering she had likely operated one before in her life, but she had also taken to driving just like Shepard, who only egged her on. 'Faster!' 'You can take that corner.' 'Why I don't see why you wouldn't be able to take this off a ramp.'

The blonde shook her head to clear her thoughts as she emerged from the brick enclosed staircase and onto the rooftop of the old town hall where Shepard's ship was parked. Her intention was to board the vessel and finalize mission priorities for tomorrow, but that would have to be delayed, because laying at the bottom of the ship's ramp, was the manticore… Staring at her…

"Oh, shi-"

The beast rose to all fours, leathery wings flaring slightly and scorpion tail flitting dangerously. The horns peaking out behind large ears glinted dangerously in the setting sun as the almost lion like face regarded her dully, as though it weren't really that interested in her. Its massive paws moved forward, spreading silently over the stone roof, and its golden mane waved in the slight breeze. The monster was tall enough to look down on the tall woman from its full height, green eyes still staring disinterestedly, though a wide tongue did snake out of its mouth to lick its chops.

"Here you go, Kar'hen!" a filtered voice came from the ramp, where Kara appeared, a chunk of red meat on a chrome platter, "I've got the sample I need from this one!"

The manticore turned the instant it heard the quarian's voice, and bounded back to the ramp eagerly, squatting down and watching the much smaller migrant descend and place the tray at its feet. Amazingly, to Cora at least, the giant beast seemed to wait on the alien's permission before practically inhaling the chunk of meat.

"Oh hey Cora! What are you doing out here?"

"…Uh…"

The migrant made a dismissive gesture with one three fingered hand towards the giant beast, "Shoo! Shoo, Kar'hen, shoo!"

'Kar'hen' responded by licking the gloved fingers first, and taking four steps away from the ramp, spreading its huge, leathery, bat-like wings… and flopped right onto the ground, spreading out over the cool stone and… purred.

"Lazy creature," the quarian grumbled, "You want to come in? I'm about to close the ship up, I think Shepard is showering."

Cora couldn't keep from glancing between the nomad and the manticore, who had pulled itself up along the edge of the building and was watching something with mild interest, despite the fact that two easy meals were standing right behind it. Granted it had just had a snack, and one of those meals was technically poison, but it genuinely seemed to not really care about the human and the quarian.

"Oh don't worry about him, I think he's just about to go, um, what did Shepard call it, 'tomcatting around'," her filtered accent earned a twitch of the monster's oversized ears and little else, "I think his species are generally nocturnal."

"There are still civilians out there, patrolling a perimeter right now," the biotic pointed out.

"And we're just standing here," Kara shrugged, "I don't know about you, but I don't think I could put up much of a fight if Kar'hen wanted to eat me."

The commando entered the ship, the ramp closing quickly behind her, as she continued her complaint, "I don't get why he didn't kill that thing."

"Maybe it's because he's adorable?"

The blonde stared at the purple visor incredulously, "We both saw the unholy union of lion, bat, and scorpion, out there right?"

Narrow, suited shoulders shrugged, "I think he's cute."

"You think Shepard is hot," Harper issued as her rebuttal.

"His body temperature is a little above the human average, which is well above quarian average, but it certainly wouldn't cause any sort of damage…"

The commando sagged into a smile as the young biologist rambled on about body temperatures in humans, quarians, and witchers, "Kara… YOU are adorable. What are you doing?"

The girl bounced a little as she was suddenly given a chance to talk about her work. She turned on her heel and walked over to a table where several chunks of flesh were still sitting there, "I'm still going through the samples I took from the fiend you and Shepard killed, I've been giving the pieces I'm done with to Kar'hen, that's why he was hanging out at the bottom of the ramp."

"Wait a second, did Shepard have to get by the manticore?"

"Yup! He told me that if I died, he wasn't burying me."

"… That sounds like him."

Two three fingered hands were sanitized and covered in latex gloves before grabbing a pair of forceps and pulling at the bloody flaps on one organ, "The fiend is a biological nightmare to deduce. I have witcher records to go off of, and this creature was well within known norms in terms of physiology, but its DNA has been totally mutated, or at least, that's my initial findings."

Stainless steel tweezers reached into the laceration, rooting around busily for a few seconds, before retreating with a blue and green pustule between the tines, "The rest of the body is perfectly fine, but in every organ, every muscle, I've found something like this."

"Is that thing glowing?"

"Yup!"

The blonde shook her head, "That can't be a good thing."

The quarian slid the pustule into a test tube and set it on the rack next to thirteen identical test tubes, filled with the same sort of growth, "Well it didn't seem to keep it from murdering hundreds, destroying heavy machinery with ease, and pushing a seasoned witcher and a talented biotic to their limits."

"Well, what were they doing there then?"

"I can't find any reference for them anywhere in the autopsy files the School of the Wolf has kept," Kara was at a loss as she put the rack of test tubes into a small freezer before bagging the other samples yet to be harvested and put in a much larger freezer, "Shepard told me to keep a record. Didn't want me to do any experiments on them, but truthfully… I don't want to. Something is wrong about them, the energy coming off of them is… it's strange. I've taken measured readings with the radioscope."

"And?"

"It matches the mind control thing Shepard can do. Axii, it's called."

…

Sensitive ears itched at the sound of screaming, viper eyes snapping open as Shepard bolted upright in his bed. They were dull, only audible due to the open atmosphere vents the witcher had kept open on his ship, but they were persistent. The mutant stilled his body, willing his heart to cease its already glacier slow pace in an effort to better hear the next cry.

Single voice, asari, younger matron, pain, not fear.

The dark haired witcher grabbed Grey Wolf from its spot leaning against the nightstand and quickly made his way out of his room without grabbing anything else, his bare feet making fleshy smacking sounds on the deck plating.

The night air was cool, fortunately the ship's kinetic barriers kept the mosquitoes away through the electromagnetic field it projected. The barriers kept literally nothing else out, but that was fine with the civilians who were posted outside with weapons supplied from his own ship, and they were the reason it was on to begin with.

The sniper that had been posted to the rooftop had turned to the witcher as he descended from the ramp. He could hear the screaming more clearly now, but it was likely still inaudible to the nervous asari who watched him rip the silver/dimeritium blade from its scabbard and rip the door to the staircase, the latch simply being torn out.

The staircase echoed with he sounds of the screams and the slapping of his bare feet. The pain had ratcheted up in those cries, but it was now accompanied by a few panicked voices, and plenty of calm ones.

"Here we go again."

"I thought… maybe this would be over now, that the witcher was here."

"Why does this happen to us!?"

"Give her space, Lyan, go get some sedatives, Raul, go get the witch- Shepard!" Moren was cut off as the monster slayer burst through the door at the stairwell and emerged into the ground floor atrium where the people had gathered around a small, frail, blue body writhing in pain.

"What's going on?" his voice was rough, sharp, partially from sleep, partially from genuine concern, and partially from a grim prescience of what actually was going on.

The matriarch closed her eyes and shook her head grimly, "It's been happening to us ever since the first attack. One of our number will be… branded… on the palm, their entire body wracked with pain until they go insane and succumb to some sort of… directive."

"To go south," Shepard said, rather than asked.

The ancient blue woman nodded, a frown marring her face, "Sometimes we'll have a week of peace, other times we'll have three people get hit within a day."

"Is there anything that precedes these 'brandings'?"

"Nothing we've been able to pin down. Our last bad attack was nearly two weeks ago."

Just after the Eden Prime attack, Shepard was on the Normandy at the time, but during the briefings he would have with Aethyta, nothing of real interest had taken place on Elutania at that time, other than the continued destruction of their civilization.

The witcher stalked over to the asari writhing on the ground and gently rolled her onto her back and grabbed at her left hand, where a burning brand showed brightly in the shape of a triangle with a circle in the center and three lines connecting the points of the triangle to the circle. Viper eyes narrowed as he observed the burning mark and narrowed even further when his own hand touched the mark only to come away unharmed.

"How do you feel?"

The matron sobbed in pain but managed to grind out an answer, "South… I have to… follow the trail… forged in blood… my soul has been chosen…"

"Why does that need hurt?"

"Don't… want to go… she hurts me for it…."

"She?"

"Whispers… in the dark… in my dreams… we all hear them!"

A glance around the room confirmed her sentiment on the subject to the mutant. They all heard the same whispering in their dreams, but, looking at the way they held shock in their eyes, they had not brought it up to each other before. That meant there was a telepathic hold on these people, and it was subtle, insidious.

"Why don't you want to go? Why don't you listen to the voice?"

"Strip… me… of… my will… steal my soul! Become a husk! … worse than death…"

Every body on that grain silo, brands burned into their skin, had been given free passage south, and then hounded. That's why they were emaciated, starved, despite everyone in the town being fairly well fed. They ran, madly, into the wilderness, and the erynias would let them. The necrophages left them alone. The fiend didn't do anything. Not until they had served their purpose.

The golden yellow eyes burned through the gathered crowd, "Someone go up to the ship! Get Kara to bring my armor down, tell her I want the big game guns AND my Cache!"

He looked down at the sobbing alien, "We're going for a walk."

 **That's all for this chapter folks, kinda short, but I hit just about every point I wanted to. My schedule has somewhat stabilized, I will be able to write on a more consistent basis, hopefully. I know I said that before, but being a traveling tech, my schedule is insane around the summers unless I can get myself on a long term job. It's not a good excuse, but it** _ **is**_ **harder to write consistently when you're hopping from hotel to hotel week after week, working 15 hour days.**

 **Umm… questions… questions…**

 **What's your guess as to what is going on with Elutania? People are going crazy, they're being branded, having fucked up dreams, and sacrificing their souls against their own will. Interesting, isn't it? I'm literally asking you guys, because this story is being made up one sentence at a time, I write what pops into my head, which is probably why this story makes no sense.**

 **Also, not a diesel mechanic, don't beat up on me if it seemed like I had no clue what was going on there. It helped that it was from Cora's POV, and she's not exactly a diesel mechanic either. But what do you think of the new Roach? Good idea? Dumb idea?**

 **Finally, anyone want to guess as to what is up with the Nihlus demon? Anyone want to take a stab? It should be obvious, I'm hardly subtle, but not everyone, in fact probably very few people, think like me. So not many people reach the same conclusions that I do when presented with circumstantial evidence. I'd still like to see your guys' thoughts, however, because as I've said, I don't really know what's going to happen next. I have ideas, but I'm always persuadable.**


	13. Chapter 13

The water sloshed around her feet as she stumbled through the rain water pooled on the street. Any other day, and she'd do her best to stay out of it. The water didn't agree with her skin, she remembered getting nasty green rashes on her legs from wearing sogging wet pants for days at a time. Now, however, the voice in her head, and the compulsion in her heart, had no time for even the most minor of detours. So she slogged on, her knees making the water splash with every step as her vision tunneled, focused only on what was ahead of her.

Briefly, memories surfaced, of a name, maybe it was hers? Mayan? Mar'I? She had a sister, didn't she? Moved away when... when... this Meryl person was young. Or was it Mon'Yq? The sister was nice, sent presents, visited, she would even bring Mar to her, and they would spend weekends at a big city. The little sister liked the big city, but she couldn't remember why... she coulnd't remember lots of things. Memories hurt.

The brand pulsed brightly, bringing the asari to her knees in the shallow end of the puddle, cracked and crumbled asphalt scraped and cut at the skin on her knees, but it was nothing comparied to the soul wrenching pain wracking her mind. The burning came not from the realm of the physical, and did nothing to harm her body, aside from scarring her palm. Instead, the wrath of a god she had once worshipped, but could no longer remember the name of, came from the aether, it struck her mind, rained down blow after blunt blow, even as razor blades cut across her soul.

 _The tree..._

Memories of two sisters were washed away by the weighted, demonic command. Her vision rattled whenever it spoke, her blood ran cold when its rumbling bass coursed through her, and her knees went weak as it issued its commands. The voice had been her companion for some time. Or was it recent? She didn't know, time was... weird. How long had she been walking? Where had she even started from? There was something directly ahead of her, some sort of... wall? That was the word for it, sure, or maybe it was supposed to be edifice?

There was a hole in the... barrier. Or maybe it was a breach. She stumbled through it, into the ankle deep swamp water. This was a swamp, she was sure of that, the voice told her so. She had to go through the swamp, had to make it to the tree. The only tree in the swamp for miles. A holy place, a sacred place, where HE was waiting for her. HE needed her strength, the others would prepare her, and the conduit would perform the act, granting the power of her own essence to HIM, and it would finally set the world right.

She would have peace, something she hadn't had for... for...

She had to get to the tree.

The Priestess would be there, she would help her reach transcendence. She would help the Prophet reach his goal, and bring back the Gods. The Dark Ones, from far beyond the visible stars, with minds so great that though she could hear their rumblings in her dreams, barely audible past the heinous demon's dark voice, she couldn't understand them. Their very voice hurt her mind, the mere memory of the sound elicited a pained gasp.

Or maybe that was the patch of thorny weeds she had just barreled through.

It didn't matter, something deep within her mind urged her forward. Her hands, her arms, her legs, even her feet were bleeding by now as the jagged asphalt and the razor sharp grass of the swamps cut at her exposed skin. None of that mattered, only the tree.

Something moved in the swamp, beneath the shallow water, behind the tall grass. Dozens of them, they were following, guiding, clearing the path. She couldn't see them, they might not be real, but they used to be. They were like her, the Chosen, from times before, their souls having been offered, their bodies now served. They rushed through the brush, their numbers, their presence, discouraging any who would interfere.

She was glad for their presence.

Something nibbled at the edge of her mind at the arrival of her entourage though. Someone was coming with her, wasn't it? Something dangerous, something that would keep her safe, something that would get her killed, something that would save her life and soul. Did she want them to scare it away? Did she want it to kill them all and whisk her back to her home?

Her thoughts were crushed by the overwhelming presence of something else in her mind. The Priestess was here. The ancient being's mere presence was crushing her mentally. Any brief knowledge of who she was, why she had been stumbling through the swamp, what had been following her, disappeared as her mind was buried.

…

Kara hunched over her latest test, a simple dextro bacterial agent, used by the Migrant Fleet and many turian agricultural communities as a test basis for the immune responses of livestock and plants. It wasn't capable of harming anything, but the immune system responded the same as it did to a deadly bacterial infection. It helped biologists like herself test the immune response of genetically modified organisms.

Right now she was testing the agent against a quarian algae, the same kind grown on live ships and used to make the nutrient paste tubes. There were four batches, three of which had been exposed to the mutagens of different monsters, while the fourth was the unmodified batch of the standard algae.

She had only applied the bacteria a few hours ago, so the results shouldn't have come in yet, hell, there shouldn't have even been any noticeable change yet, but already one of the samples, one that had been intermixed with the mutagens from the fiend. The solution would turn blue once the bacteria had been eliminated, and red if the algae died. This particular batch had already turned blue.

Grabbing the dish in one gloved hand, the quarian wheeled her chair over to the microscope, and quickly slotted the dish into the machine and turned the viewing screen on.

"What's going on?" a voice asked from behind her.

The nomad turned to regard the blonde human watching over her shoulder at the screen, "One of the samples is ready. I'm doing a visual analysis before I put it through the DNA analyzer to determine viability."

"What are these samples for?"

"Short answer, I'm trying to permanently strengthen quarian immune systems, and I'm hoping the answer can be found in these mutagens," Kara replied with a sigh, it had produced interesting results so far, but nothing conclusive, nothing she could build off of.

"Why in the world would you think to use monster parts?"

"The Trial of the Grasses, Shepard told me they use mutagens to give the witchers their mutations, one of which is total immunity to disease, infection, and even a muted reaction to foreign bodies. They don't get sick, their noses never plug up, their lungs never fill with fluid, and their joints never swell. If I can figure out which of the mutagens was responsible for that, and narrow it down to the DNA sequences, then I can move on to splicing it into complex dextro lifeforms, and eventually, possibly the entire Migrant Fleet."

"Yeah, and they're also sterile."

The nomad just shrugged, "That's why I have to be careful. Though I do think snake eyes would be cool."

Cora smiled and looked over the alien's shoulder, "So what's going on with the sample? Did you get a good result, or bad result?"

"As long as the sample is pure, there is no such thing as a bad result," the biologist claimed, "But this one certainly is interesting."

And it was. The bacteria had been wiped out, and none of the algae had died. Not one cell. And now the algae was mutating, or at least that's what Kara concluded as she watched the normally very passive and immobile single cell life form wriggle across the dish, consuming the remains of the dead bacterial agent. What perhaps was most interesting was that this had only happened to some cells, and the rest lied there passively, soaking in the light from the UV lamp.

She'd have to replicate the test a few hundred times, though that would be easy enough, run it through different variations, ensure that its not just the bacteria it is reacting to, and that it can fight off different things like viruses, parasitic organisms, but for now, she'd need to put this under observation. Once she was done with the next series, likely in a few days, she could start trying to splice it into more complex lifeforms, probably keep it to vegetation, if only just to make sure she could combine the DNA without immediately killing something.

But it was real progress. She had had flashes of promise before, but never a fully successful trial run. Only temporary improvement before the mutagens killed the algae itself, it the mutagens wore off. There was still a chance of that happening, that's why she would have to leave it alone for a few days, under observation of the microscope's VI of course.

"So is it useful?" Cora asked the quarian, who had gone quiet for some time as she contemplated the first real break in her research she had gotten.

"It's too early to tell, but it's the first one I'll be able to take to a second round of trials, but it will be a while before I can start those."

The blonde human sighed and sat back against the wall of the cargo bay, rubbing her armored fingers over a dark stain on the floor of the bay.

"I think that was the werewolf from Elysian, we had its body hung up there for a while, trying to get an ID on the person it used to be," Kara supplied for the unasked question.

Harper grimaced at the thought, "What's it like? Witcher's work?"

What a weird question. It wasn't like she knew what the actual work was like. Occasionally, she got to watch the footage from his bodycam. But only the stalking of the creature, never the kill. Not because she wasn't allowed to see the kill, but frankly, she wasn't sure if she could stomach watching it. Shepard was constantly coming back with injuries, sometimes minor, sometimes bad enough to kill any quarian outright, but those concoctions he so carelessly jammed into his veins do work, and kept him alive.

"Hard... brutal... bloody."

Kara shrugged, "I don't know how to describe it other than that. I've watched him take on nightmares I could never have imagined before meeting him, and he does it every damn day. If he were anyone else, if he were any _thing_ else, I'd be worried for him. Mentally I mean."

"I don't know," Cora began lowly, though a small smirk turned her lips up, "You seem pretty concerned about him physically, too."

The nomad's cheeks flushed red, and not for the first time, she was glad her visor was mostly opaque. So she thought Shepard was a physical specimen, so what? His eyes were interesting, their vertical pupils were sharp, and so expressive and deep... Keelah! She needed to focus right now.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

The blonde cackled, "Oh come on! The rest of Talein's Daughters won't stop talking about how in love with him you are. You must have stared at him for five minutes before you realized we were watching!"

This was embarrassing.

"Then there was how you just _glared daggers_ at everyone who looked more than twice at him," Cora continued, either oblivious, or much more likely, encouraged by the wilting quarian, "And when Deela kept trying to get her hands underneath his shirt? I thought we were gonna find her dead in her quarters with three fingered hand prints on her neck!"

"Well she should keep her hands to herself!"

"Hey! Shep didn't seem to mind," Harper pointed out, "I don't think he's new to a, um, 'friendly touch'"

Kara's shoulders slumped, "You know the pirate queen on Omega?"

Cora tilted her head, "Yeah?"

The quarian shrugged, "They send messages to each other nearly every day."

The biotic looked confused, so the biologist continued, "She sends pictures..."

The pieces clicked in place for the commando as she nodded, a wry smile coming over her face, "You better hope Aria T'loak doesn't mind sharing."

"Well, according to the picture I saw, she certainly doesn't mind sharing _with_ him, I don't know about how she feels about..."

Alarms started ringing throughout the small ship.

Both women jumped to their feet at the same time, "Shepard!"

…

"What do you think it is?" the krogan, Drack, spoke directly into Garth's ear through the comm unit he had given the ancient lizard.

Currently, the witcher, his asari commando companion Captain Nirissa, and the old krogan Nakmor Drack were all surrounding a ring of asari, natives to the planet, all holding torches and chanting in some ancient, eldritchian language. At the center of them all, a bloodied pentagram pulsed in tune with their chanting, growing brighter and leaking flames from an unholy source.

"Pretty obvious what it is," the Old Wolf said, creeping through the thick brush that hadn't been cleared by the blue skinned cultists, "What has me curious, is where did these people come from? Nearest town is back the way we came, and there wasn't anyone alive back there."

"There were scattered cabins throughout the forest," Nirissa whispered from her position high in a tree, sniper rifle trained on Garth as he moved through the blue foliage, intent on clearing any one of the patrolling cultists outside the ritual from the witcher's path, "About a dozen, could be they hid among those?"

"Don't know how that giant wouldn't have found them," Drack muttered, the large krogan was with a contingent of his mercs and a couple of rock trolls, ready to storm in on the witcher's signal, "Damn thing was stomping all around the forest."

As the old witcher settled up in a small depression, some scraggly branches tipped in navy blue leaves covering the shine from his viper eyes as he took in the scene before him. He had managed to avoid the sporadic patrolling cultist, the tatooed asari walking an ill defined perimeter with mismatched weapons, and no armor. One was walking without any clothes at all, and only a rusty spiked baseball bat, where they got the human sports tool Garth had no idea, but he had no doubt that while it looked primitive, the bat would do plenty of damage, particularly when wielded by a biotic.

But the six or so asari walking around with poor armor and poor weapons didn't worry the Old Wolf nearly as much as the thirteen gathered in the circle. Five sat at the points of the pentagram, another five at the vertices, all dressed in black robes over nothing but a belt holding wicked daggers as long as their forearms. At the top of the pentagram, two asari stood, one in the same black robe as the ones on the outside, and the other wearing a pure white robe, with bound wrists and a gag in place. The second alien's face was streaked with tear tracks, and her eyes were full of fear as to what was happening, and while Garth was no expert when it came to judging asari ages, the one held captive couldn't have even reached seventy years.

Finally, there was the one in the center of the pentagram, leading the chant, held her dagger out, unsheathed and glimmering dangerously in the red light of the hellfire. This one's hood was down, revealing the whole of the blue woman's head, a multitude of piercings and tattoos shown off with pride. This one was old, maybe matriarch age, maybe late stage matron, but she was clearly the eldest of the group, and where all of the other cultists showed no emotion, and the captive showed fear, this one showed grim, sick pleasure for what was no doubt about to occur.

The chant ended, and the magic in the air coalesced, the center of the evil symbol turned solid red, and began bubbling, as though it were now a pool of unfathomably deep human blood. If Garth's theory about what they were doing and whom they were doing it for was true, then it easily could be that.

From the bloody puddle, a stone slab arose, a sacrificial table. Obsidian stone scarred and scratched from the countless lives taken upon it, but there were no stains upon the unworldly table.

"Deliverance is nigh!"

The voice of the lead woman was sultry, seductive, a good match with her attire, figure, and current position as the leader of a demon worshipping cult.

"The winds are shifting, forces are taking shape, and ancient beasts awaken from a long slumber."

The comm piece in Garth's ear crackles, it was Nirissa, "We waiting for her to finish her speech?"

"I'll let you know," the ancient witcher whispered back, hand on the hilt of his sword.

"Tonight, we commit another soul to the cause, confident that our Master's Servant will use this girl's strength to crush our enemies."

The ten surrounding the three in the center raised their arms, smiles worming their way onto their faces, eyes taking on a manic gleam, and they all chanted a response in the same language.

The cult leader waved to the asari holding the captive in her place, prompting the sadistically smiling blue alien to shove the crying one forward, and force her onto the table. The young maiden bucked and squirmed, trying to escape from the supernatural stone slab, but her captor held her down, not even bothering with her natural biotics.

A tremor of excitement rose through the air as the leader stepped forward, raising the dagger high, more chanting started up, and the matriarch had one last thing to say.

Garth beat her to it.

"Now."

A shot rang out, and the cult leader's head burst apart in a shower of blue gore.

There was no moment of pause for the cultists, for the next thing they knew, they were under attack from two sides.

Three huge bodies burst from the forest, one wielding a shotgon, the other two only carrying their hands, but the unarmed were more than a match for the asari.

One cultist reared back with her iron bar, her entire body and the weapon glowing blue as she flashed out of exsitence, and reappeared right on top of the trolls. With all her significantly augmented strength, the blue skinned alien brought the wrought iron bar down on the troll's head.

"Ow."

The response was swift, as the monster simply reached out, wrapped its long, rocky arms around the slight framed asari, and squeezed, blood bursting from her eyes, nose, and mouth as the troll rearranged her insides with a grisly embrace.

Next to the troll, Drack brought his modified krogan shotgun to bear on a pair of cultists from the circle, daggers ready to at least attempt to skewer the three hard shelled intruders. The heavy flechettes ripped right through the thin robes and relieved the blue aliens of their intestines.

The second troll, on the other side of Drack, had decided he desired a weapon, and found one that fit his hand perfectly, the body of a cultist. From what Garth could see, it was quite effective, slapping aside anyone who came near with efficiency, and a fair amount of gore.

As for the witcher, all by his lonesome on the other side of the sinister circle, the silver/dimeritium blade clashed with the strange wicked daggers of the cultists. Garth supposed he should be a little more active, but he wanted some of these people alive, to determine what was going on. There were a lot of questions here. Who were the Masters? Who was their Servant?

One of these people had to know, the witcher reasoned, and rather than slapping down a sloppy thrust from a dagger and skewering the cultist, he slid the razor edge of his sword down the blade of the dagger, past the hilt, and severed a few fingers. A silver studded backhand knocked the blue woman's lights out.

A bioticially enhanced slash was easily avoided, with the highly trained ancient witcher knocking out the amatuer fencer with ease. Behind him, and high up in the navy tinted foliage, Narissa had forgone the sniper rifle, picking up on her mutated partner's intentions, and began using her biotics to pluck a few unfortunate cultists and slam them against the ground.

"Figured we'd get a little more fight outta these," Drack rumbled as the fight came to a close, the cult leader's face firmly clenched in one massive, fleshy three fingered hand, "I've taken down cults before, usually got a few tricks up their sleeves."

"I don't know if we can call this a cult at this point," Garth replied as he directed a turian merc towards a pair of unconscious asari, "more like some sort of wild tribe in the middle of the woods."

"What was this ritual?" Narissa asked as she had finally descended from her perch in the trees and was moving along the site, pointing her body cam at everything that was of significance, no doubt making sure there was a record of the entire incident her superiors to breakdown as much as possible. Wasting her time, no two summoning's were entirely the same. Particularly when you get into the realm of evil entities.

The witcher tapped the millenium old krogan with the tip of his silver sword, nodding to the cult leader the krogan was still palming. Drack tossedthe alien against the altar, delivering a swift kick to the ribs when she briefly flashed with biotics, quelling the possible escape attempt.

With a mild shake of his head, the Old Wolf kneeled next to the shapely, and barely clothed, alien. Viper eyes were sharp as they regarded the markings covering her skin, "What was the point of all this?"

The purple iris of the asari were barely visible, so dilated were her pupils, giving her a crazed, manic look, "Power."

The asari grabbed something from a band around her upper left arm. Belatedly, the witcher realized it was a knife, but by then, it was too late, and viscous purple blood poured over her blue skin, running in rivers past the rough edges of the tattered cloak, and onto the dark obsidian stone upon which she was propped against.

The response of the stone, and the circle it was in the center of, was immediate. Engravings appeared along its sides, glowing with an internal hellish energy, and the pentagram, which had been dying in its intensity as soon as the ambush had begun, roared back to life.

The two smiles of the cult leader, one bearing gleaming white teeth while the other still spilling out the alien's life through its jagged opening, took on a sinister tone in the light before the body burst into flame.

Witcher and krogan covered their eyes as the hellfire grew to outshine the midday sun. The heat blistered skin and scales alike with its unholy ferocity. And then, as quickly and as suddenly as it started, the fire was gone, taking with it the altar, and pentagram around it.

"Oh fuck me!" Drack bellowed as he looked around the suddenly dark camp, "What in Verun's itchy quad was that?"

…

"What was that?"

Jared let the burnt out husk of what used to be an asari drop to the ground, flexing his fist to get used to the blisters the heat of the fire had left there. All around the Bear, smoldering husks of what used to be cultists, whose ritual he and Arysa had interrupted. There was no evidence left of their circle, nor the stone altar they had been prepared to sacrifice a young human girl upon.

Instead, the leader had sacrificed herself, ripping her own stomach open with a wickedly curved dagger and spilling her intestines upon the stone. Then her, and the bodies of all the others the witcher and commando had slain had burst to flames, but the bodies weren't burnt, not in the sense they had been caught in an inferno at least. It was more like they had been sunburnt, or dessicated. Completely dried out.

The witcher was at a loss, "Don't know."

Seemed like they were sacrificing the soul of the young girl, but instead wound up sacrificing themselves. They were dedicated, that was for sure.

"What was the point of all this?" the commando was gesturing with her free hand to the surroundings, a swampy copse of trees, decorated in demonic runes and an ancient and arcane language. From the branches, hung the intestinal tracts of dozens of different species. Some were sentient, others belonged to the animals crawling across the swamp. Jared had assumed this to be the lair of some beast nearby, some sort of water hag, or foglet.

"Don't know."

The commando didn't like that answer, but wasn't going to pick a fight with the seven foot tall goliath covered in the ichor of the slain. But he wasn't the only target in the clearing.

"What about you!?" Arysa barked, moving on the frightened human girl they had saved from the ritual, "You've been with these people for weeks, you must have seen something! Heard something!"

Interesting interrogation technique, just yell at someone till they tell you what you want to hear. Jared doubted the girl knew much anyway, but it was an interesting process to witness all the same. The Bear moved on to the environment, keeping an ear open for the questioning going on behind him.

"I don't know why they did this!" the girl, probably only fifteen or sixteen years old. Once rich chocolate skin had been leeched of color and vitality, only remnants of what was once great youth and vigor remained. Perhaps she would gain it back in the end...

Something shifted in the swamp.

"They captured me months ago! Me and fifteen others! I'm all that's left!"

Olaf still glistened with the blue blood of cultists in the dim torchlight, its tip plunged right through the chest of one cultist and into the muddy ground beneath.

Ripples on the swamp water lapped up at the edge of the muddy island.

"So what? Now they've decided to start killing you off? What for?"

There was a story carved onto the trunks of one of the trees, a figure standing above a crowd, arms spread, wreathed in some sort of power. Above the figure was something else. Was that a squid?

A twig snapped in the darkness.

"No, they've been doing it on a regular schedule!" the girl cried, terrified both of the circumstances and the angry asari commando standing over her, "They said something about the empowerment of the Masters. I swear I don't know anymore!"

There were more carvings upon the trunks of the gnarled blue trees. A figure, much taller than anything else depicted, was devouring the screaming masses, one at a time. Another trunk showed a different figure, devouring yet more people, people who were already mortally wounded, yet still able to show their horror at their fate. A third trunk showed a smaller figure, cloaked, standing above another body.

Branches in the swamp's canopy shook violently as something moved through it with speed.

Jared ripped Olaf from the ground and whirled on the darkness, sensing something coming closer and nearly breaking into the circle of light. Arysa and the young girl both looked up shocked as the huge man moved at great speed, his massive silver sword whirling around in the light, casting ominous reflections from the torchlight.

Water sloshed as something rushed through the shin high swamp towards them, and the Bear and commando prepared for a fight...

When a four legged mammal burst into the light, paused at the sight of the three sentient creatures, and bolted through the muddy island pushed up by the tree roots. The creature was followed by more of its brethren, most passing around the sacrificial site. Vaguely reminiscent of deer, they were clearly running from something.

Above their heads, avian creatures and primitive primates rushed through the branches, running in the same direction as the deer like mammals, and from the direction they had come from, a green light lit up the forested swamp, followed by the unholy wail of the undead.

"Wraiths."

…

Wraiths.

A dozen of them, all circled around the unfortunate victim of the telepathic manipulation that Shepard had followed here. The asari had stumbled her entire way to the circle, found directly underneath the lone tree of the marshes, the witcher following at a distance as had been agreed upon, but it hadn't taken long for the Wolf to notice a change in his charge.

Where in the town she had been in pain, but fully in control of her own faculties. Here in the wide open bog, there was no control in her movements. Her strides had become desperate shambling, her breath had turned from measured, if fearful, pants, to panicked gasping and painful moans. The towering grasses had slashed at her bared skin, and cuts bled an easily followed trail through the moonlit marsh, but they weren't what was causing the alien pain.

The brand burned bright in the shadows.

That's what led Shepard to the scene he was at now. Twelve wraiths, hellfire portals, and a brain dead asari offering herself up for some sort of sacrifice.

The pentagram circle the wraiths and the sacrifice occupied pulsed again and another wraith joined the group, bringing the number of souls currently not bound by physical form up to thirteen. The number must have been significant, because it was at that moment, a portal opened up outside of the pentagram, and out stepped a figure.

Hunched and hobbled, it was vaguely... humanoid. At least it had two legs, two arms, and a head on top... scratch that, it had four arms, Shepard just wasn't sure the lower pair coming out of the stomach pouch belonged to it. The creature wore a pointed red hat that came down into some sort of eyepatch covering one of its eyes, drawing attention to the second eye, or eyes, for they appeared to be the compound eyes of an insect.

Its limbs were misshapen, with arms far too long for its short body, hands too large, fingers too few, and long, dull claws on each digit. Its legs were short, squat, and unmatched in length, leading to a hobbling gate as it waddled towards the victim in the center.

This is the point where a hero would intervene. Would swoop in, take out the obvious monster, ward off the wraiths, and save the helpless maiden. This would also not answer any questions. This entire planet was in the grip of something heinous, something sinister. If it were just monsters, doubtless Shepard would have already moved, hacking and slashing and shooting his way through the hordes of the supernatural, but these weren't simple monsters.

The creature down there, the hag, the crone, was something that had never been mentioned in any bestiary. It wasn't a demon, in the typical sense of the word, nor was it a relict or any sort of spirit. Obviously the creature was intelligent, and powerful, to be so at ease with the wraiths as it was, as though it controlled the undead, when even ghouls would find it difficult to cohabit with spirits.

Was it responsible for the energy field surrounding the planet? One that made it difficult to even broadly communicate with the cruiser Illyana. Was it responsible for the almost militarized distribution and mass tactics of the monsters inhabiting this planet?

The mutant didn't know the answers to any of those questions, but at the cost of one asari life, he would have a much better chance of answering them.

He was no hero, he was a professional.

The crone reached the edge of the circle and stopped. The asari in the center whimpered pathetically, barely audible over the crackling hellfire to the witcher's straining ears. The creature ran a thumb across her palm and the brand on the blue woman's hand burned bright once again, dropping her to her knees in pain and screaming in agony.

"Ring the dinner bell," the creature rasped, its voice sending chills through Shepard as he watched the scene through the scope on his heavy assault rifle, "Time to eat, Nihlus!"

Nihlus? That was a turian name.

The crone ran her thumb across her palm again, and once again the asari was wracked with pain. Her body convulsed, energy pouring from wounds, and soon from her very essence itself. The summoning circle they were upon began to change. The ground within its bounds swirled, as though it were a vortex, though the one person standing upon it was not tripped by the shifting dirt and mud in the slightest.

"Ring, ring, hateful creature!" the crone continued to cackle in her harsh voice, "Maybe this time you'll actually be of use to Lord Saren!"

Saren. Saren Arterius? Saren the Spectre that is responsible for an attack on an Alliance colony that left thousands dead, and responsible for Geth rampaging through the Kepler Verge, the same Saren, whose brother Shepard had captured, tortured, and beheaded above Shanxi.

Finally, a flash of energy burst forth from the woman in the center of the circle, seemingly releasing the asari from whatever hold held her, as she bolted from the circle, espousing nonsense and gibberish as she tore through the tall grass and disappeared.

Even before the alien was gone, the ground beneath the summoning circle dropped away, and a vortex of hellfire spun into existence, extending down deep into the earth, seemingly into the bowels of hell itself, and from this opening a three clawed hand shot up, followed by a spray of molten rock. It was as if some creature was pulling itself from the liquid magma core of the planet.

The vortex stopped spinning, the hellfire burned out, and the ground rose back up, leaving a nine foot tall figure draped in a heavy cloak, leaning heavily on a rusted polearm, one that Shepard had seen before in the offices of Hierarchy admirals, it looked closest to an battleax of ancient Homeworld history, but was in fact, an ancient turian weapon, used when they had yet to learn to sail the meager oceans of Palaven.

"Feast, demon," the crone spoke again, "Lord Saren wouldn't want to lose another of his kin to... humans."

Without delay, the demon reached out towards a wraith, its massive, taloned hand piercing the ethereal nature of the spirit, and brought the lost soul to its mouth, where shockingly, it devoured the wraith, one bite at a time.

Okay, that was enough questions answered for now.

Three rounds burst from his rifle, the fifty calibre rounds impacting what Shepard presumed to be the greatest threat, the demonic turian devouring wraiths for energy. The silver slugs fragmented upon impact, shredding through the soft flesh of the caricature with ease, but feasting as it was, the wounds upon the hell spawn healed as soon as they appeared.

The crone, for its part, didn't even have the decency to appear surprised by his appearance, even going so far as to taunt him without turning towards him.

"I was wondering when you would show up, Wolf. I've been watching you since you landed."

Two more rounds had a similar effect upon the demon, inflicting great damage that was quickly repaired as the unholy terror split the wraith in two and finished feasting upon its energy, reaching for the next one. So, Shepard switched targets, this time sending a trio of shots right at the hag.

These slugs didn't even have a chance to make their impact, however, as the unknown creature merely dissipated, into a murder of crows that beelined for the hiding witcher.

The Wolf barely had time to bail on his hiding spot and get into the open as the crone reformed as the crows came back together, bringing a heavy claw down on the ground where he had been prone, mud flying from her supernatural strength.

"When that insufferable wretch came seeking to employ me, I nearly tried my hand at a stew," the crone said as it scuttled with surprising speed, avoiding another fifty caliber round that sailed through the tall grass instead.

The creature charged forward at absurd speeds, mud flinging through the air as its malformed feet churned underneath it. The Wolf moved to halt its charge with a burst of Aard, his fingers twisting to form the complex runes necessary. The wave of kinetic energy impacted the wretched witch, who merely burst apart into her murder of crows yet again.

"But he offered me a chance at revenge," came the continuation as it reformed, some distance away, squatting amidst the shallow, ankle deep water, "It's been so long since I last had a chance at a witcher, since that bitch Cirilla stole my sisters from me!"

The crone shot its hands into the mud, and the ground before her erupted in a spray of mud and dirty water that was headed right for the witcher.

The game of move, countermove, continued as Shepard merely rolled away from the dark spray of energy and squeezed off a few more rounds into the creature, who this time, chose to slap them away in a hiss of rage.

"Taught by that foul White Wolf!" it spat before rushing forward again, this time Shepard chose to meet her head on, Grey Wolf singing from its scabbard.

"He thought himself so high and mighty! Some sort of savior!"

At this distance, the witcher was able to pick up on the insects buzzing around the crone's compound eye. The creature was strong, there was no doubt, and very fast, but it was clear early on that there was little actual skill in a melee for its part.

"He couldn't save those children! He couldn't save the Baron's wife from insanity!"

Still, it was difficult keeping up with the pure savagery coming from the monster in front of him. He covered its arms and hands in cuts and scrapes, but had yet to be afforded the opportunity to go on the offensive.

"And he was able to stop our Solstice! So what? My sisters and I had given that land everything they had! When we left, what did they have? Misery and despair!"

"Do you ever shut up?"

Another burst of Aard kicked the legs out from under the hag and gave Shepard the space and time he needed to pirouette and bring Grey Wolf around to start going on the offensive. The creature recovered quickly, but reacted poorly to the first feint, and the silver/dimeritium tip dug a gouge through the flabby chest region of the crone.

That was no galactic treasure he had just ruined.

"Foul mutant! Do you think to best me? I've collected the medallions from your brothers for centuries before the White Wolf!"

"Good gods, hag, shut up and fight!"

A savage right hook was stopped by the tip of Grey Wolf punching through, spraying black ichor from the open palm. The silver blade whirled around and caught the left swipe, turning it down, and followed up with a slash that cut into the crone's shoulder.

Enraged, the crone simply smashed its ape-like arms into the ground, creating a shockwave that picked the witcher off the ground and tossed him back a few meters, his back making a wet thud as it hit the soft marshy ground.

Quen was all that saved his life as dark claws rained down upon him as soon as he hit the ground. With no space and no position to use his sword, one of his twin pistols found its way into his hand and punched a shot straight through the hag's belly. The wound, though not fatal for a creature as ancient and powerful as this crone, but it gave him space, and a defensless target.

Igni cast a different light than the evil hellfire that populated the summoning circle. It was brighter, hotter, more full of life.

And just as capable of taking it.

The crone reared back, the tattered rags it called clothing were set ablaze, wrinkled skin blistered under the supernatural heat, and raspy, distorted voice screamed in agony at the pain.

Shepard flipped to his feet, sword shimmering as it danced in the unholy fires setting the light by which viper eyes could see. The crone wasn't done, not by a long shot, and now he had well and truly pissed it off. Now was when he needed to press an advantage and finish this fight quickly.

Unfortunately, that didn't seem to be in the cards for Shepard, as the crone's compound eye twinkled despite the pain, "Time's up for you, Young Wolf!"

Viper eyes narrowed briefly before he felt something behind him. They widened when he realized what it was.

A crushing blow to the side lifted the monster slayer off his feet and slammed him against the trunk of the lonely marsh tree. The heavy assault rifle had been thrown clear of his body, as well as one of his twin hand cannons. Grey Wolf had slipped from his grip, but managed to land next to where his crumpled form hit the ground.

Alarms on his suit gave him single, quiet beeps to inform him that something, most likely a lot of somethings, had gone horribly wrong with the suit. He didn't even need the alarm, truthfully, for the witcher could feel as he lay on the ground, that his armor plating had cracked, and the right shoulder pauldron had simply been crushed completely.

Still, the armor did its job as there were no broken bones, and the auto injector on his wrist still seemed to be functional. Good thing too, he was gonna need it in a minute as he felt a three clawed hand reach down and grab him by the waist.

With barely enough time to slip his fingers around Grey Wolf, Shepard found himself airborne again, this time flying back into the center of the summoning circle. Fortunately this landing was softer, unfortunately, he did not have the protection he had last time, and felt the jagged edge of his broken armor plates cut into his torso.

A quick command to his omnitool, and the auto-injector on his right gauntlet smashed two plungers down on preloaded vials. Swallow always hits the system hard, especially since it did nothing to help with the pain, but Thunderbolt was the worst. Taking his typical twenty eight beats per minute heartrate and ramping it all the way up to nearly two hundred. He'd had broken bones that hurt less than that.

He wouldn't deny their effectiveness, however, as his limbs found new energy and the mutant flipped to his feet, sword at the ready.

Demon and witch squared up on him. One on one, the witcher could take down the crone, of that he was certain. It would be a hard fight, and require a bit of luck, but he'd had harder fights. The demon... Shepard was not as confident. He'd felt the raw power, and having freshly feasted on the souls of whomever those unfortunate wraith's were, it was at the height of its abilities. There was no record of fights won against these things, though in truth, it was difficult to have any sort of record on creatures of the darkness between worlds. They defied logic, and therefore defied classification.

"I trust you enjoyed your meal, Nihlus?"

The hood fell back on the towering demon, revealing a turian face. Was this Nihlus Kryik? The Spectre who had been on Eden Prime with Jane? The Nihlus that had had his face and brain cut out of his corpse?

"Here's desert!" the crone cackled gleefully.

"Just shut up," the Wolf grumbled under his breath as he surged forward.

The witcher ducked under one sweeping strike from the turian ax, and ran the blade of Grey Wolf across the arm and slipped it underneath one armpit to drag it along the slender unholy terror.

There was no grunt of pain from the creature, and indeed, the wound disappeared as quickly as it was put there. The rusted alien weapon came around again, finding air again as the mutant, hopped up on his cocktail of chemicals, moved far too quickly for the slow weapon to find him. Shepard ran his sword nearly to the hilt through the midsection of the creature, and was quick to rip it out through one side, going for maximum damage before rolling away, narrowly avoiding the counterattack.

Again, the massive chunk of flesh missing in its side healed nearly instantly, though slower than the other wounds had before it. Could it be possible to outlast this thing? Whittle away at its unreal healing factor? Or was the healing factor only temporary and Shepard would just have to wait it out and just stay alive?

Lightning reflexes saved him from the flanking wave of magical force.

Right, two of them. Kill one first.

The alien ax nearly took his head, the Wolf replied by taking another chunk of flesh that merely regenerated, again, slower than last time.

The mutant danced around the hag, delivering another nasty cut along the back of the evil creature. The witcher ducked underneath a three clawed hand and put another hole in the demon's midsection.

Igni burned bright, driving back the witch, followed by a North Wind bomb to slow down the unholy specter's advances. Aard knocked the towering terror off balance and Samum kept the hag distracted.

It was a dance with little to no progression, and the only one wearing down was him. No surprise the demon didn't get tired, even if it was getting easier to wound, but the crone only seemed to get stronger the longer the fight went on. There was a bloodlust there, a hatred that the beastly version of a woman had more than hinted at. It was clear it hated witchers, Wolve's in particular. Most likely because the famous Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf, had supposedly slain her sisters, or had a hand in their deaths. Though what the bit about a girl named Cirilla was all about, Shepard had no clue.

And no time to dwell upon it, as fatigue was working its way through him, and the moisture from the humid night had made the already muddy ground slicker. A momentary lapse in concentration was all it took for the witcher's footing to fail him, and the Wolf found himself flat on his ass, staring right into the merciless gaze of a former turian's possessed corpse.

The hellfire was still raging throughout the circle, casting an unholy yellow light over the figure as it raised its turian melee weapon high. so that begged the question, why was the side of the demon lit bright white?

The sound of an airhorn caused all three combatants to look for its source, just in time to watch a restored swamp bug slam into the side of the demon, burying it under five tons of steel, rubber, and diesel.

The roar of Roach's engine and blare of its horn was drowned out in that moment by the pounding thrum of batlike wings from the back of the swamp bug and the roar of a great beast as a manticore launched into the air.

Lion sized jaws powerful enough to crush through the chitin of a shaelmaar latched onto the arm of the crone. With a jerk of its powerful head, the manticore threw the malformed witch into the air, where it grabbed her with its strong, spiked tail and slammed her back into the mud.

The great beast, and now apparently Kara's personal attack dog, reared up, ready to slam down two gigantic paws onto the hag when it pulled its disappearing act yet again.

The witcher lunged to his feet, looking for where it might reform, but the sound of wings were still sounding, beating further and further away. It ran?

"Looks like we got here just in time," Cora exclaimed breathlessly from the driver's seat of Roach, "You don't look so good."

Shepard was still listening hard for the sound of crow wings. The hag had been injured very severely by the witcher, add onto that a manticore attack, and it was possible it was too injured to continue, or had thought the fight had shifted out of its favor, what with the demon having been run over and all...

"Cora, Kara! Get out of the damn..."

A three fingered hand shot up, grabbing Harper by the face through the driver's side window, and pulled the blonde biotic from the vehicle, slamming her head first into the mud. The only reason the human commando survived was by the incidental protection the clawed hand provided.

Kara, who had nearly frozen at the sight of Cora being yanked from the vehicle, was tossed around the cabin as the swamp bug bucked violently, the demon underneath forcing the heavy vehicle out of its way.

The nine foot towering terror reeled up to its full height, human still clutched in its claws, and let out a bellowing roar that shook the very world around them.

The second of the twin pistols found Shepard's left hand, and barked its own retort. The former turian face bloomed with a new hole that definitely wasn't supposed to be there, and for the first time, the demon showed pain, and dropped Cora Harper.

The fight had turned, finally in the witcher's favor.

"Kara, grab Harper!"

With a whistle, the witcher leapt at the front of the demon, taking its concentration, and allowing a lion sized hybrid to leap upon its back, all six hundred pounds of muscle, claws, and fury flattening the horror.

While the demon was down, Grey Wolf feasted on flesh, this time the chunks it hacked away didn't regenerate. This time, it was going to stay down...

The manticore was flung from the monster's back, and a backhand launched Shepard across the summoning circle yet again. This time, ribs broke under the pressure, and blood ran freely from the cuts inflicted by the jagged armor. Swallow was doing its best, but it was taking everything it had to keep the Wolf alive, let alone conscious.

Three thundering steps had the huge nightmare above Shepard and ready to kill when a blue aura wrapped around the demon and flung it back against Roach, where its head promptly exploded outwards.

It stumbled forward, rolling away from the swamp bug, revealing Kara and Cora in the cab of the vehicle, the quarian still firing her custom purple rifle into the demon, as the ethereal aura of biotics winked out around the human's bruising face.

Finally the rifle in the biologist's hands overheated, giving the terror a second of reprieve, before the manticore was upon it again, latching on to one arm with armor crushing jaws and pinning it in one place.

That place, is where Grey Wolf took its head, and its other arm, cut it in half from hip to hip. The battered and bruised Shepard took no chances. This fight was over, here, and now.

And as the last cube of rotted flesh hit the marshy soil, and the first rays of dawn began to pinken the horizon, Jon actually let himself believe the thing was dead for good.

 **Meh, not sure about this, but you guys had waited long enough.**

 **Dragon of Dragonstone will probably not get an update till I'm through ME1 with this fic. If I choose to continue writing at all.**

 **The computer this chapter was on originally drowned, which is why you guys had to wait so long for this one, as I had to completely rewrite it. That's what I get for not trusting the cloud I suppose, but I don't understand how suspended water vapor is supposed to save my data?**

 **I have a challenge I'd like to issue some ambitious writer out there, PM me if you're interested, but I'd really like to see a well done fic of various superheroes, versus slasher villains. I want to see Batman vs Jason Voorhees. I really do. I'm sure that fic exists on this site, but I'm equally sure its riddled with grammatical and spelling errors, as well as sporting a very poorly written Jason.**

 **If you've been trying to message me and I haven't gotten back to you, I will try and do so very soon, I had some health issues and my immediate schedule has opened up a little as a result.**

 **One last question before I go, am I going too far with this? Have I gone too far with this storyline? Let me know.**


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